CHAPTER XIVTHE LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCEDark had fallen. The winter night was setting its teeth hard when Robin dismounted in the Mayne yard. He had forgotten about being tired. His brain had kept a strange sort of time to the drum of hoofs on the frozen ground. He couldn’t make a decision. His instinct was to stand his ground. Yet he knew the risk of that. Sutherland would be implacable. Once a fighting man himself, for a long time Sutherland had frowned on gun fighting on his range. He had grown old and rich. Both publicly and privately he was strong for law and order, set against feuds. He was a fanatic in loyalty. He would never believe that Mark Steele had forced the issue. He would say he meant to see justice done when in reality he would be seeking revenge on an alien rider who had killed one of his trusted men.Robin held his decision until he could talk with Dan Mayne. Red Mike stood in a stall. He could ride fast and far. He stood a moment to pat the red horse’s glossy hide, thinking that he hated to run. He had been afraid and he was no longer afraid. He would never be afraid of any man again. Robin had never heard a champion pugilist’s dictum that “the bigger they are the harder they fall”, but that was in essence how he felt now. Only, as a reward for proving that truth to himself, he did not wish to wear a striped government suit and enjoy free lodging in state quarters for an indefinite period. Adam Sutherland was powerful enough in Choteau county to inflict that penalty on him.He walked into the house. Mayne sat by the fireplace sucking his pipe. Ivy came to meet him.“I’m empty as a last year’s water barrel,” he said to her. “Get me some supper, will you, hon?”“Where on earth have you been all this time in this kind of weather?” Ivy stayed to ask.“Oh, every place,” Robin put her off. “Go on, old girl. I’m starved.”Ivy went into the kitchen.“Steele jumped me this afternoon down at the Birch Creek line camp. I killed him,” Robin said bluntly, as soon as they were alone.Mayne took his pipe out of his mouth. For a second he looked incredulous. Then a shade of fear crossed his face.“Good Lord!” he breathed. “The fat’ll be in the fire now. The Block S’ll be on us like a bunch of wolves.”“On us?” Robin queried. “How? Where do you come in? I did the killin’.”“How?” Mayne echoed. He rose to his feet, strode up and down the room. “How? Hell, I know Sutherland. He’ll make this range too hot to hold me. He’ll take this personal. He thought the sun rose an’ set around that —— —— ——!”He spat a mouthful of epithets on the dead man. Robin stared at Mayne with a little heart sinking. This was the reward for loyalty. Mayne saw only his material interests further imperiled by the inevitable dénouement. The big fish, angered, would harry the little fish who had troubled the range waters. It came over Robin with a discouraging conviction that for all he was in a way of becoming Mayne’s son and right bower he could expect little backing, either moral or financial, in this crisis. Mayne had been furious at Shining Mark’s depredations, furious and afraid. Shining Mark would rustle no more Bar M Bar calves. But Mayne had a new fear—Sutherland’s anger. The Block S could blackball him, refuse to handle his stock, bar his riders from round-up, throttle him in a dozen ways.Something like contempt stirred briefly in Robin.“I don’t see where you need worry,” he said.Perhaps his tone brought Mayne back to a consideration of immediate consequences.“You’ll have to jump out, I guess,” said he. “Sutherland’ll get you buried for life if you stand trial, no matter how good a defence you got. How’d the play come up?”Robin told him briefly. The old man listened, shaking his head.“You ain’t got a chance in the world, unless you could prove Mark was actually stealin’,” he gave his opinion. “Thatcher’ll swear black is white an’ white’s no color at all. Gosh, Robin, I wish you hadn’t got Steele.”“If I’d ’a’ known you’d back water in a pinch maybe I wouldn’t,” Robin said slowly. “He didn’t steal my calves. I could ’a’ let it slide. I could ’a’ told Shinin’ Mark I was deaf, dumb, an’ blind about what went on on this range, and he would have left me alone. You’re a poor stick, Mayne.”“I ain’t either. I’m as game as the next,” Mayne retorted. “But I can go broke on lawyers an’ witnesses a whole lot quicker than Adam Sutherland, an’ get put outa business besides. It’s all right for you wild kids to rip an’ tear regardless. It’s took me thirty years to collect a thousand head of cattle an’ a home.”He strode up and down the bare floor mumbling to himself. Robin sat thinking. He would have to go on the dodge. If he stood pat he would be under arrest within forty-eight hours. Mayne was frightened. He could see that. The old man wanted only to wash his hands of the whole business.Ivy came to the door and beckoned. Robin sitting with downcast eyes did not notice. She came in, looked from one to the other.“What’s wrong now?” she demanded. “Somethin’ is.”“This crazy kid has gone an’ killed Mark Steele,” Mayne flared up. “We’re tryin’ to figure what he’d better do.”“I’ll do my own figurin’,” Robin said tartly. He had already made up his mind. “I’m goin’ to eat an’ ride. You can rest easy. I won’t mix you up in no big trial.”Ivy stood as if petrified. When Robin put out his hand to her she shrank.“So—oh,” he breathed. “It jars you like that, does it?” and walked past her into the kitchen.His food was on the table. He set himself to eat. It might be a long stretch between meals, he thought grimly. But beyond a bit of bread and meat and a cup of coffee food seemed to choke him. He was calm enough. He had no more regret than he would have had at crushing a snake’s ugly head under his boot heel. But he quivered inside. He sat alone by the table listening to the mutter of voices in the other room. He had played the game. Because he had played a desperate trump to take the winning trick, he must lose. He felt that. Mayne most of all feared for his security as a little cowman tolerated in the heart of a cattle king’s domain. Ivy—he couldn’t make her out. Something seemed to be slowly freezing inside Robin.Ivy came out of the other room at last and stood looking at him as he rolled a cigarette and lit it, nursing his chin in one palm as he blew smoke.“It’s awful, Robin,” she sighed. “I wish I’d never gone to that dance. What’ll you do?”“Hit the trail,” he answered.Ivy stood still. She didn’t offer to kiss him. She seemed deep in some consideration which had, Robin felt forlornly, very little to do with him.“Will you go with me?” Some obscure impulse prompted the question. “I might never come back.”“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” she whispered.Then she flung herself at Robin, clung to him. She buried her face in his shoulder, shaking with sobs.“Oh, it’s awful, Robin,” she cried. “I can’t bear it. It’s awful!”“Can’t bear what?” Robin asked.He had no key to her mood. He couldn’t tell whether her grief was for him or Mark or for herself, or whether this tragedy in which she was involved simply oppressed her beyond endurance. But her grief racked him. He knew no way to comfort her. He could not stay to comfort her. For a moment he thought of explaining that this trouble had arisen simply because Mark Steele was a thief trying to cover his trail. But it was a little late for explanation which did not alter facts. They had never told Ivy the real truth. And Mark was dead. It didn’t matter now.She withdrew from his arms and began nervously to gather up dishes. Robin watched her for a minute. Some sort of impalpable barrier was between them. Nothing he could say or do would make it any different.“Well, I got to get organized,” he said and rose. Ivy looked at him once, went on with her work. Old Mayne appeared in the doorway.“What you aim to do?” he inquired uneasily. “Stand pat, or light out?”“What you think yourself?” Robin asked. It was an idle question. He knew what he would do. He was only curious to know what Mayne really wanted him to do.“If it was anybody but Sutherland you might come clear,” Mayne grumbled. “With the Block S pullin’ the strings you’ll get manslaughter sure as blazes.”“Suppose I stand trial and get a year, or two, or ten?” Robin went on. “Where’ll I be at with you two when I come out?”Mayne glanced at his daughter, wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. The girl stood silent. Robin looked from one to the other. A faint sardonic smile fluttered about his lips.“You got a home here anytime you come back,” Mayne said. “You know that.”There was no warmth in the assurance. Robin felt that when he had ridden out into the night something like relief would be the most definite sensation in the agitated breasts of these two.“Well, you don’t need to worry,” he said at last. “I’m not goin’ to stand arrest. I don’t know as any Tyler ever did, come to think of it. Chances are if they send a deputy sheriff after me he’ll ride careful, prayin’ to God he don’t come on me. There’s a lot of territory between here an’ Texas where a man can make a fresh start.”He walked out without waiting for an answer. Mayne followed with a lantern. Robin saddled Red Mike, led him out and dropped the reins at the bunk house door. There were a few odds and ends he wanted, clothes he would need. In twenty minutes he was ready, rifle slung under his stirrup leather, a hundred rounds of ammunition belted on, his clothes in a war bag across his saddle. He turned with his hand on the stirrup and walked back to the house. He couldn’t leave Ivy like that. He was sick inside, but he couldn’t go without a word.“I’m gone to the wild bunch, hon,” he put his arms around her.Ivy sobbed afresh, repeating that senseless “Oh, it’s awful,” over and over until Robin stopped her mouth with a kiss that brought no answering pressure from her cold lips.“I’m gone,” he said briefly. “You want me to come back?”“I don’t want you to go,” she cried, “I don’t want you to go!”“I got to.”“I guess so. All right,” she seemed to collect herself. “Write to me Robin, an’ tell me how you make out.”“I’ll get word to you,” he promised. “Good-by.”Within ten minutes he drew up at his own door. He came near passing the dimly outlined cabin with a glance and a sigh, but he recalled some papers he thought wise to take and so dismounted. He struck a match, got what he wanted out of a tin box on a shelf, and rode on.The moon was still below the horizon. Robin pointed Red Mike’s nose straight for the Block S home ranch and rode fast. The point he bore for lay straight across the Bear Paws where the Montana Central branched off the main line of the Great Northern. He could go in three directions from there. He would be on a train before word of that killing reached the Block S.He had an idea that pursuit and search would be perfunctory until Adam Sutherland stirred up the county authorities, privately speeded up the mechanism of the sheriff’s office. Even if Thatcher or one of the others took horse and rode they could cover ground no faster than he. He would beat them to the railroad by hours. After that—well Robin knew the range men, banked for safety on that knowledge. They would look for him anywhere but on a train. And Robin meant in that hour to turn his back forever on the range and cattle and cow thieves—all that had been his life ever since he could remember. He rode over the high, moon-washed divide of the Bear Paws in snow three feet deep, with a maturing plan and a definite purpose and destination in mind. A clean break! A new country, a different country. Everything behind him severed.From the Bar M Bar to Havre Junction was a little over forty miles in an air line. Robin dismounted in the outskirts of the little town at three P.M., having ridden the distance in six hours.He stood patting Red Mike’s sweaty neck while the beast nuzzled him impatiently.“So long, old boy,” he whispered. “You’ll be free to roam now. I hope nobody grabs you just because they know I’ve quit the country.”Red Mike rolled in the snow, shook himself like a dog, ambled away, vanished in the dark. In three or four days he would be grazing with the wild horses on Chase Hill, or by Cold Spring, back in his old haunts. Robin watched him go with a little pang.Then he took his saddle on his shoulder and passed along a dark street until he found a livery stable with a sleepy hostler whom he roused off a cot in the office.“I want to leave this saddle here for a spell,” he said.“All right. Chuck her in the harness room,” the man said. “Gee whiz, I’m sleepy! I’m goin’ to pound my ear again.”Robin gained the railroad station without meeting a soul. The saddle would be safe for a month, six months, a year. He was going where he would not need a saddle. If he didn’t come back to claim it, no matter.In a dim corner of the empty waiting-room he changed to his good suit and plain shoes. Then he sat down to await the west-bound passenger.This train would go through Big Sandy at six o’clock. There was little likelihood of any one there knowing that Mark Steele had passed out of the picture. No one would dream of Robin Tyler riding boldly west on the Montana Central through Sutherland’s home town. If he could get past Fort Benton and Helena without being recognized he was safe. Detective bureaus did not flourish in the cow country. Sheriffs had duties enough at home without going far afield for trouble. The survivor of a private war who quietly left for parts unknown was seldom troubled by the authorities in a distant state.Robin banked on that. He would go far and he would never come back. It would be a closed chapter. Sitting in that dimly lit room he felt no fear of consequences, no pang of remorse, only a strange touch of sadness. He hadn’t wanted it to be that way. Six months earlier he had looked forward confidently, joyously indeed, to a future in the shadow of the Bear Paws, a future that comprised round-up and wild riding, a bunch of cattle of his own, a home on Little Birch—and Ivy to make that home bright. He had loved the sight of the hills in summer, the pressure of the wind on his face as he rode. Life had been pleasantly compounded of hope and ambition and love, the regard of his fellows and a singular sense of oneness with his environment.He shook himself out of this brooding. It made him ache. It was done, finished. He might drift eventually to other cattle ranges but he would never ride the Bear Paws again, he would never sit on Chase Hill at sundown and watch the afterglow rose-pink on Old Centennial.And he would not listen again to May Sutherland’s throaty voice. Robin was conscious enough of his mental processes to wonder why he thought of May Sutherland now instead of Ivy, why the image of the one who had wept bitter tears on his shoulder six hours ago grew obscured by a sharp-cut vision of the other sitting on a sorrel horse looking wide-eyed into the west where the plains rolled like the sea.May would have understood how a man might be caught in a vicious circle and forced to play the only card he held. He doubted if Ivy did.Anyway, it didn’t matter, Robin assured himself morosely. Neither woman could count for much now. He was to all intents an outlaw. Before long there might literally be a price on his head.He kept his face to the window on the opposite side of the car when the train hauled up at Big Sandy station. Dawn was breaking when the Fort Benton stop came. Beyond Fort Benton Robin breathed easier. Once the train passed Great Falls and bore up into the foothills of the Rockies he shook off his wariness and began to view the country with interest. He was in a new country already and the lure of the unknown began to exert its spell.Robin was for the coast, the far Pacific which he had never seen. He had little of the landsman’s curiosity about the sea, but he knew that no one would dream of a cow-puncher with a killing behind him planting his stakes on Puget Sound. He had bought a ticket on the train. As that read, Helena was his destination. Helena was at once the state capital and the winter rendezvous and residence of many cattlemen, Sutherland among them. On any street corner he might meet a man he knew. So Robin kept on to Butte. He could make a detour and get back on the main line at a junction west of the continental divide.Thus he avoided a stop in the last place where he might be recognized. Twelve hours later he was forging along the Hell Gate river, the Rockies behind him, the world ahead of him, a ticket to Seattle and three hundred dollars in his pocket.The sun blazed in the car windows. The valley beside the track, the hills, the farther higher mountains glittered with frost and snow. Robin with his nose to a pane reflected that it might be worse. They might be burying him instead of Shining Mark. And when a man died he was a long time dead. Thus he comforted himself as the train rolled west.A porter sonorously announcing luncheon reminded Robin that hunger could be appeased in the dining car. He had eaten coffee and hot cakes early that morning at a chophouse in Silver Bow. He brushed his hair and followed the porter.In the second Pullman to the rear he brought up in the doorway with a start. Three seats ahead, facing him wide-eyed with surprise, sat May Sutherland. A broad pair of shoulders surmounted by a thick red neck informed him that Adam Sutherland was her vis-a-vis. For a moment Robin’s eyes met the girl’s inquiring stare. Then he swung on his heel and went back to his seat. The world was too small. There would be no food for him in that dining car. He did not dare run the gauntlet.For an hour Robin chafed in his seat. Here were both disturbance and danger. The mere knowledge that May was within speaking distance troubled him in a vague fashion. And if Adam Sutherland laid eyes on him! By now the owner of the Block S must have been informed of what had befallen Mark Steele.Robin looked up from these reflections to find May at his elbow, smiling uncertainly. He rose. For the life of him he could not help a slightly apprehensive glance past her. She seemed to divine his thought.“Dad’s having a smoke back in the observation,” she said.“Will you sit down a minute?” Robin bethought himself of courtesy. May slipped into the seat facing him, looked at him with a sober intentness.“What has happened?” she asked quietly.Robin stared. Either she knew what had happened, or her intuition was uncanny. What difference did it make to her?“How do you know anything has happened?” he countered.“I don’tknow,” she replied slowly. “But I have that sort of feeling. When you came to our car and turned back. Perhaps it was that. I don’t know.”Robin’s mind worked fast. If word had reached Adam Sutherland and Sutherland discovered he was on that train, old Adam would have an officer at his elbow between stations. He doubted if May would mention his presence. Yet she might. Shewasfrank. Robin couldn’t associate her with deceit or subterfuge. But if he asked her not to mention him she wouldn’t—only he would have to tell her why. And why not? She would learn eventually. Robin felt that he would rather she learned from his own lips. He remembered with a queer glow that she had said: “If there is to be a funeral I hope it will be his.”“I’m on the dodge,” he said quietly. “Mark Steele jumped me day before yesterday. I killed him. That’s why I backed out of your car. I didn’t want your dad to see me. I’m quittin’ Montana for good.”He put his hands on his knees and faced her impassively, curious to see how she would take it. A little gleam of admiration warmed him. She had nerve, this slender wisp of a girl. She neither winced nor looked shocked nor did any of the things a woman might reasonably be expected to do when a man calmly informs her that he has taken another man’s life.“Somehow, I don’t seem to be surprised much, nor horrified, nor sorry,” she murmured at last. “I suppose he crowded you into a corner. But do you have to run? Haven’t you a plea of defense?”“Not much, as it stands. And I’d need a good one,” he told her soberly. “You see Steele kept diggin’ into me all fall. He wanted me to jump him so that he could kill me. He drove me crazy that day in Big Sandy. I said before twenty men that I’d kill him. The kind of lawyers and the kind of witnesses that would be against me in a trial would cook my goose. There’d only be my word that I had to get him or he would have finished me. This Thatcher was there. He’ll have his own story. He’s just as keen to put me away as Shinin’ Mark was. All things considered I can’t stand trial. I was born free,” he ended a little wistfully, “I’ve lived free and I aim to die that way. I won’t take no chance on lookin’ through bars like a caged wolf for doin’ somethin’ that was forced on me.”“There is more than Ivy Mayne back of this,” May said slowly. There was a peculiar sort of conviction in her tone.“Yes,” Robin admitted. “But it don’t do no good to talk about that now. Too late.”May rose.“I must go back,” she said. “We are on our way to visit friends. We get off at Missoula. Is there any message I can take back to—to any one, when I go home in the spring.”Robin shook his head.“Remember me to the hills when you go ridin’,” he muttered. “That’s all.”The girl’s eyes clouded.“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and held out her hand. “Good-by, Robin Tyler—and good luck to you.”Robin turned his face to the frosted window. There was a blur in his eyes as well as on the pane. A lump in his throat grew and swelled till it seemed as if it would choke him.
Dark had fallen. The winter night was setting its teeth hard when Robin dismounted in the Mayne yard. He had forgotten about being tired. His brain had kept a strange sort of time to the drum of hoofs on the frozen ground. He couldn’t make a decision. His instinct was to stand his ground. Yet he knew the risk of that. Sutherland would be implacable. Once a fighting man himself, for a long time Sutherland had frowned on gun fighting on his range. He had grown old and rich. Both publicly and privately he was strong for law and order, set against feuds. He was a fanatic in loyalty. He would never believe that Mark Steele had forced the issue. He would say he meant to see justice done when in reality he would be seeking revenge on an alien rider who had killed one of his trusted men.
Robin held his decision until he could talk with Dan Mayne. Red Mike stood in a stall. He could ride fast and far. He stood a moment to pat the red horse’s glossy hide, thinking that he hated to run. He had been afraid and he was no longer afraid. He would never be afraid of any man again. Robin had never heard a champion pugilist’s dictum that “the bigger they are the harder they fall”, but that was in essence how he felt now. Only, as a reward for proving that truth to himself, he did not wish to wear a striped government suit and enjoy free lodging in state quarters for an indefinite period. Adam Sutherland was powerful enough in Choteau county to inflict that penalty on him.
He walked into the house. Mayne sat by the fireplace sucking his pipe. Ivy came to meet him.
“I’m empty as a last year’s water barrel,” he said to her. “Get me some supper, will you, hon?”
“Where on earth have you been all this time in this kind of weather?” Ivy stayed to ask.
“Oh, every place,” Robin put her off. “Go on, old girl. I’m starved.”
Ivy went into the kitchen.
“Steele jumped me this afternoon down at the Birch Creek line camp. I killed him,” Robin said bluntly, as soon as they were alone.
Mayne took his pipe out of his mouth. For a second he looked incredulous. Then a shade of fear crossed his face.
“Good Lord!” he breathed. “The fat’ll be in the fire now. The Block S’ll be on us like a bunch of wolves.”
“On us?” Robin queried. “How? Where do you come in? I did the killin’.”
“How?” Mayne echoed. He rose to his feet, strode up and down the room. “How? Hell, I know Sutherland. He’ll make this range too hot to hold me. He’ll take this personal. He thought the sun rose an’ set around that —— —— ——!”
He spat a mouthful of epithets on the dead man. Robin stared at Mayne with a little heart sinking. This was the reward for loyalty. Mayne saw only his material interests further imperiled by the inevitable dénouement. The big fish, angered, would harry the little fish who had troubled the range waters. It came over Robin with a discouraging conviction that for all he was in a way of becoming Mayne’s son and right bower he could expect little backing, either moral or financial, in this crisis. Mayne had been furious at Shining Mark’s depredations, furious and afraid. Shining Mark would rustle no more Bar M Bar calves. But Mayne had a new fear—Sutherland’s anger. The Block S could blackball him, refuse to handle his stock, bar his riders from round-up, throttle him in a dozen ways.
Something like contempt stirred briefly in Robin.
“I don’t see where you need worry,” he said.
Perhaps his tone brought Mayne back to a consideration of immediate consequences.
“You’ll have to jump out, I guess,” said he. “Sutherland’ll get you buried for life if you stand trial, no matter how good a defence you got. How’d the play come up?”
Robin told him briefly. The old man listened, shaking his head.
“You ain’t got a chance in the world, unless you could prove Mark was actually stealin’,” he gave his opinion. “Thatcher’ll swear black is white an’ white’s no color at all. Gosh, Robin, I wish you hadn’t got Steele.”
“If I’d ’a’ known you’d back water in a pinch maybe I wouldn’t,” Robin said slowly. “He didn’t steal my calves. I could ’a’ let it slide. I could ’a’ told Shinin’ Mark I was deaf, dumb, an’ blind about what went on on this range, and he would have left me alone. You’re a poor stick, Mayne.”
“I ain’t either. I’m as game as the next,” Mayne retorted. “But I can go broke on lawyers an’ witnesses a whole lot quicker than Adam Sutherland, an’ get put outa business besides. It’s all right for you wild kids to rip an’ tear regardless. It’s took me thirty years to collect a thousand head of cattle an’ a home.”
He strode up and down the bare floor mumbling to himself. Robin sat thinking. He would have to go on the dodge. If he stood pat he would be under arrest within forty-eight hours. Mayne was frightened. He could see that. The old man wanted only to wash his hands of the whole business.
Ivy came to the door and beckoned. Robin sitting with downcast eyes did not notice. She came in, looked from one to the other.
“What’s wrong now?” she demanded. “Somethin’ is.”
“This crazy kid has gone an’ killed Mark Steele,” Mayne flared up. “We’re tryin’ to figure what he’d better do.”
“I’ll do my own figurin’,” Robin said tartly. He had already made up his mind. “I’m goin’ to eat an’ ride. You can rest easy. I won’t mix you up in no big trial.”
Ivy stood as if petrified. When Robin put out his hand to her she shrank.
“So—oh,” he breathed. “It jars you like that, does it?” and walked past her into the kitchen.
His food was on the table. He set himself to eat. It might be a long stretch between meals, he thought grimly. But beyond a bit of bread and meat and a cup of coffee food seemed to choke him. He was calm enough. He had no more regret than he would have had at crushing a snake’s ugly head under his boot heel. But he quivered inside. He sat alone by the table listening to the mutter of voices in the other room. He had played the game. Because he had played a desperate trump to take the winning trick, he must lose. He felt that. Mayne most of all feared for his security as a little cowman tolerated in the heart of a cattle king’s domain. Ivy—he couldn’t make her out. Something seemed to be slowly freezing inside Robin.
Ivy came out of the other room at last and stood looking at him as he rolled a cigarette and lit it, nursing his chin in one palm as he blew smoke.
“It’s awful, Robin,” she sighed. “I wish I’d never gone to that dance. What’ll you do?”
“Hit the trail,” he answered.
Ivy stood still. She didn’t offer to kiss him. She seemed deep in some consideration which had, Robin felt forlornly, very little to do with him.
“Will you go with me?” Some obscure impulse prompted the question. “I might never come back.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” she whispered.
Then she flung herself at Robin, clung to him. She buried her face in his shoulder, shaking with sobs.
“Oh, it’s awful, Robin,” she cried. “I can’t bear it. It’s awful!”
“Can’t bear what?” Robin asked.
He had no key to her mood. He couldn’t tell whether her grief was for him or Mark or for herself, or whether this tragedy in which she was involved simply oppressed her beyond endurance. But her grief racked him. He knew no way to comfort her. He could not stay to comfort her. For a moment he thought of explaining that this trouble had arisen simply because Mark Steele was a thief trying to cover his trail. But it was a little late for explanation which did not alter facts. They had never told Ivy the real truth. And Mark was dead. It didn’t matter now.
She withdrew from his arms and began nervously to gather up dishes. Robin watched her for a minute. Some sort of impalpable barrier was between them. Nothing he could say or do would make it any different.
“Well, I got to get organized,” he said and rose. Ivy looked at him once, went on with her work. Old Mayne appeared in the doorway.
“What you aim to do?” he inquired uneasily. “Stand pat, or light out?”
“What you think yourself?” Robin asked. It was an idle question. He knew what he would do. He was only curious to know what Mayne really wanted him to do.
“If it was anybody but Sutherland you might come clear,” Mayne grumbled. “With the Block S pullin’ the strings you’ll get manslaughter sure as blazes.”
“Suppose I stand trial and get a year, or two, or ten?” Robin went on. “Where’ll I be at with you two when I come out?”
Mayne glanced at his daughter, wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. The girl stood silent. Robin looked from one to the other. A faint sardonic smile fluttered about his lips.
“You got a home here anytime you come back,” Mayne said. “You know that.”
There was no warmth in the assurance. Robin felt that when he had ridden out into the night something like relief would be the most definite sensation in the agitated breasts of these two.
“Well, you don’t need to worry,” he said at last. “I’m not goin’ to stand arrest. I don’t know as any Tyler ever did, come to think of it. Chances are if they send a deputy sheriff after me he’ll ride careful, prayin’ to God he don’t come on me. There’s a lot of territory between here an’ Texas where a man can make a fresh start.”
He walked out without waiting for an answer. Mayne followed with a lantern. Robin saddled Red Mike, led him out and dropped the reins at the bunk house door. There were a few odds and ends he wanted, clothes he would need. In twenty minutes he was ready, rifle slung under his stirrup leather, a hundred rounds of ammunition belted on, his clothes in a war bag across his saddle. He turned with his hand on the stirrup and walked back to the house. He couldn’t leave Ivy like that. He was sick inside, but he couldn’t go without a word.
“I’m gone to the wild bunch, hon,” he put his arms around her.
Ivy sobbed afresh, repeating that senseless “Oh, it’s awful,” over and over until Robin stopped her mouth with a kiss that brought no answering pressure from her cold lips.
“I’m gone,” he said briefly. “You want me to come back?”
“I don’t want you to go,” she cried, “I don’t want you to go!”
“I got to.”
“I guess so. All right,” she seemed to collect herself. “Write to me Robin, an’ tell me how you make out.”
“I’ll get word to you,” he promised. “Good-by.”
Within ten minutes he drew up at his own door. He came near passing the dimly outlined cabin with a glance and a sigh, but he recalled some papers he thought wise to take and so dismounted. He struck a match, got what he wanted out of a tin box on a shelf, and rode on.
The moon was still below the horizon. Robin pointed Red Mike’s nose straight for the Block S home ranch and rode fast. The point he bore for lay straight across the Bear Paws where the Montana Central branched off the main line of the Great Northern. He could go in three directions from there. He would be on a train before word of that killing reached the Block S.
He had an idea that pursuit and search would be perfunctory until Adam Sutherland stirred up the county authorities, privately speeded up the mechanism of the sheriff’s office. Even if Thatcher or one of the others took horse and rode they could cover ground no faster than he. He would beat them to the railroad by hours. After that—well Robin knew the range men, banked for safety on that knowledge. They would look for him anywhere but on a train. And Robin meant in that hour to turn his back forever on the range and cattle and cow thieves—all that had been his life ever since he could remember. He rode over the high, moon-washed divide of the Bear Paws in snow three feet deep, with a maturing plan and a definite purpose and destination in mind. A clean break! A new country, a different country. Everything behind him severed.
From the Bar M Bar to Havre Junction was a little over forty miles in an air line. Robin dismounted in the outskirts of the little town at three P.M., having ridden the distance in six hours.
He stood patting Red Mike’s sweaty neck while the beast nuzzled him impatiently.
“So long, old boy,” he whispered. “You’ll be free to roam now. I hope nobody grabs you just because they know I’ve quit the country.”
Red Mike rolled in the snow, shook himself like a dog, ambled away, vanished in the dark. In three or four days he would be grazing with the wild horses on Chase Hill, or by Cold Spring, back in his old haunts. Robin watched him go with a little pang.
Then he took his saddle on his shoulder and passed along a dark street until he found a livery stable with a sleepy hostler whom he roused off a cot in the office.
“I want to leave this saddle here for a spell,” he said.
“All right. Chuck her in the harness room,” the man said. “Gee whiz, I’m sleepy! I’m goin’ to pound my ear again.”
Robin gained the railroad station without meeting a soul. The saddle would be safe for a month, six months, a year. He was going where he would not need a saddle. If he didn’t come back to claim it, no matter.
In a dim corner of the empty waiting-room he changed to his good suit and plain shoes. Then he sat down to await the west-bound passenger.
This train would go through Big Sandy at six o’clock. There was little likelihood of any one there knowing that Mark Steele had passed out of the picture. No one would dream of Robin Tyler riding boldly west on the Montana Central through Sutherland’s home town. If he could get past Fort Benton and Helena without being recognized he was safe. Detective bureaus did not flourish in the cow country. Sheriffs had duties enough at home without going far afield for trouble. The survivor of a private war who quietly left for parts unknown was seldom troubled by the authorities in a distant state.
Robin banked on that. He would go far and he would never come back. It would be a closed chapter. Sitting in that dimly lit room he felt no fear of consequences, no pang of remorse, only a strange touch of sadness. He hadn’t wanted it to be that way. Six months earlier he had looked forward confidently, joyously indeed, to a future in the shadow of the Bear Paws, a future that comprised round-up and wild riding, a bunch of cattle of his own, a home on Little Birch—and Ivy to make that home bright. He had loved the sight of the hills in summer, the pressure of the wind on his face as he rode. Life had been pleasantly compounded of hope and ambition and love, the regard of his fellows and a singular sense of oneness with his environment.
He shook himself out of this brooding. It made him ache. It was done, finished. He might drift eventually to other cattle ranges but he would never ride the Bear Paws again, he would never sit on Chase Hill at sundown and watch the afterglow rose-pink on Old Centennial.
And he would not listen again to May Sutherland’s throaty voice. Robin was conscious enough of his mental processes to wonder why he thought of May Sutherland now instead of Ivy, why the image of the one who had wept bitter tears on his shoulder six hours ago grew obscured by a sharp-cut vision of the other sitting on a sorrel horse looking wide-eyed into the west where the plains rolled like the sea.
May would have understood how a man might be caught in a vicious circle and forced to play the only card he held. He doubted if Ivy did.
Anyway, it didn’t matter, Robin assured himself morosely. Neither woman could count for much now. He was to all intents an outlaw. Before long there might literally be a price on his head.
He kept his face to the window on the opposite side of the car when the train hauled up at Big Sandy station. Dawn was breaking when the Fort Benton stop came. Beyond Fort Benton Robin breathed easier. Once the train passed Great Falls and bore up into the foothills of the Rockies he shook off his wariness and began to view the country with interest. He was in a new country already and the lure of the unknown began to exert its spell.
Robin was for the coast, the far Pacific which he had never seen. He had little of the landsman’s curiosity about the sea, but he knew that no one would dream of a cow-puncher with a killing behind him planting his stakes on Puget Sound. He had bought a ticket on the train. As that read, Helena was his destination. Helena was at once the state capital and the winter rendezvous and residence of many cattlemen, Sutherland among them. On any street corner he might meet a man he knew. So Robin kept on to Butte. He could make a detour and get back on the main line at a junction west of the continental divide.
Thus he avoided a stop in the last place where he might be recognized. Twelve hours later he was forging along the Hell Gate river, the Rockies behind him, the world ahead of him, a ticket to Seattle and three hundred dollars in his pocket.
The sun blazed in the car windows. The valley beside the track, the hills, the farther higher mountains glittered with frost and snow. Robin with his nose to a pane reflected that it might be worse. They might be burying him instead of Shining Mark. And when a man died he was a long time dead. Thus he comforted himself as the train rolled west.
A porter sonorously announcing luncheon reminded Robin that hunger could be appeased in the dining car. He had eaten coffee and hot cakes early that morning at a chophouse in Silver Bow. He brushed his hair and followed the porter.
In the second Pullman to the rear he brought up in the doorway with a start. Three seats ahead, facing him wide-eyed with surprise, sat May Sutherland. A broad pair of shoulders surmounted by a thick red neck informed him that Adam Sutherland was her vis-a-vis. For a moment Robin’s eyes met the girl’s inquiring stare. Then he swung on his heel and went back to his seat. The world was too small. There would be no food for him in that dining car. He did not dare run the gauntlet.
For an hour Robin chafed in his seat. Here were both disturbance and danger. The mere knowledge that May was within speaking distance troubled him in a vague fashion. And if Adam Sutherland laid eyes on him! By now the owner of the Block S must have been informed of what had befallen Mark Steele.
Robin looked up from these reflections to find May at his elbow, smiling uncertainly. He rose. For the life of him he could not help a slightly apprehensive glance past her. She seemed to divine his thought.
“Dad’s having a smoke back in the observation,” she said.
“Will you sit down a minute?” Robin bethought himself of courtesy. May slipped into the seat facing him, looked at him with a sober intentness.
“What has happened?” she asked quietly.
Robin stared. Either she knew what had happened, or her intuition was uncanny. What difference did it make to her?
“How do you know anything has happened?” he countered.
“I don’tknow,” she replied slowly. “But I have that sort of feeling. When you came to our car and turned back. Perhaps it was that. I don’t know.”
Robin’s mind worked fast. If word had reached Adam Sutherland and Sutherland discovered he was on that train, old Adam would have an officer at his elbow between stations. He doubted if May would mention his presence. Yet she might. Shewasfrank. Robin couldn’t associate her with deceit or subterfuge. But if he asked her not to mention him she wouldn’t—only he would have to tell her why. And why not? She would learn eventually. Robin felt that he would rather she learned from his own lips. He remembered with a queer glow that she had said: “If there is to be a funeral I hope it will be his.”
“I’m on the dodge,” he said quietly. “Mark Steele jumped me day before yesterday. I killed him. That’s why I backed out of your car. I didn’t want your dad to see me. I’m quittin’ Montana for good.”
He put his hands on his knees and faced her impassively, curious to see how she would take it. A little gleam of admiration warmed him. She had nerve, this slender wisp of a girl. She neither winced nor looked shocked nor did any of the things a woman might reasonably be expected to do when a man calmly informs her that he has taken another man’s life.
“Somehow, I don’t seem to be surprised much, nor horrified, nor sorry,” she murmured at last. “I suppose he crowded you into a corner. But do you have to run? Haven’t you a plea of defense?”
“Not much, as it stands. And I’d need a good one,” he told her soberly. “You see Steele kept diggin’ into me all fall. He wanted me to jump him so that he could kill me. He drove me crazy that day in Big Sandy. I said before twenty men that I’d kill him. The kind of lawyers and the kind of witnesses that would be against me in a trial would cook my goose. There’d only be my word that I had to get him or he would have finished me. This Thatcher was there. He’ll have his own story. He’s just as keen to put me away as Shinin’ Mark was. All things considered I can’t stand trial. I was born free,” he ended a little wistfully, “I’ve lived free and I aim to die that way. I won’t take no chance on lookin’ through bars like a caged wolf for doin’ somethin’ that was forced on me.”
“There is more than Ivy Mayne back of this,” May said slowly. There was a peculiar sort of conviction in her tone.
“Yes,” Robin admitted. “But it don’t do no good to talk about that now. Too late.”
May rose.
“I must go back,” she said. “We are on our way to visit friends. We get off at Missoula. Is there any message I can take back to—to any one, when I go home in the spring.”
Robin shook his head.
“Remember me to the hills when you go ridin’,” he muttered. “That’s all.”
The girl’s eyes clouded.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and held out her hand. “Good-by, Robin Tyler—and good luck to you.”
Robin turned his face to the frosted window. There was a blur in his eyes as well as on the pane. A lump in his throat grew and swelled till it seemed as if it would choke him.