CHAPTER X
IN THE MOONLIGHT
She stood there in a bright patch of moonlight looking up into his face, seeing every line of it in the rich flood of light from the full moon, wondering dully if she had lost her sense of the real and the unreal. It seemed to her so rankly absurd, so utterly preposterous that he should seek to pretend with her. For, now that she had seen the limping gait of his big sorrel, was she more than certain that this was the man whom she had seen following her in the afternoon. And as she noted again the sinewy bigness of him, the garb of grey shirt, open vest and black chaps, she told herself angrily that he was a fool, or that he thought her a fool, to pretend that he knew nothing of that thing which had just happened in the lonely cabin. Even the grey neck-handkerchief, now knotted loosely about the brown throat, was there to give him the lie…. With shame and anger her cheeks burned until they went as crimson as hot blood could make them.
It was all so clear to her. She had refused to believe that he had robbed Hap Smith's mail bags. Why? She bit her lip in sudden anger: because he had fitted well in a romantic girl's eye! Fool that she was. She should have put sterner interpretation upon the fact that Thornton, coming rudely into the banker's private office, had admitted hearing part of her conversation with Mr. Templeton. Now she had no doubt that he had heard everything.
"Have you ever been over this trail? As far as the next ranch, seven miles further on?" he asked at last, his hard eyes coming away from the horse that stood with one foot lifted a little from the ground, the quick twitching of the foot itself, the writhing and twisting of the foreleg, speaking of the pain from the deep cut.
"No."
There was so much of hatred in the one short word which she flung at him, so much of passionate contempt, that he looked at her wonderingly.
"What's the matter, Miss Waverly?" he asked, his voice a shade gentler.
"You seem all different somehow. Are you more tired than you thought?"
She laughed and the wonder grew in his eyes. He had never heard a woman laugh like that, had not dreamed that this girl's voice could grow so bitter.
"No," she told him coldly. She jerked her pony's reins out of Thornton's hand. "I am going to ride on. And I suppose you will ride that poor wounded horse until it drops!"
"No," he said. "That's why I asked if you knew the trails. I didn't notice he limped out there where I put the saddle on. It was dark under the trees, you know."
"Was it?" she retorted sarcastically, drawing another quick, searching look from him.
There was no call for an answer and he made none. He stepped to his horse's head, lifted the wincing forefoot very tenderly, and stooping close to it looked at it for a long time. The girl was behind the broad, stooping back. Impulsively her hand crept into the bosom of her dress, her face going steadily white as her fingers curved and tightened about the grip of the small calibre revolver she carried there. And then she jerked her hand out, empty.
She saw him straighten up, heard again the long, heavy sigh and marked how his face was convulsed with rage.
"I don't know why a man did that." He was only ten steps away and yet she turned her head a little sideways that she might catch the low words. She shivered. His voice was cold and hard and deadly. It was difficult for her to believe that in reality he had not forgotten her presence.
"No, I don't know why a man did that. But I'm going to know. Yes, I'm going to know if it takes fifty years."
"Where is my trail?" she called sharply. "I am going."
"You couldn't find it alone. I'm going with you."
Her scorn of him leaped higher in her eyes. It was her thought that he was going to ride this poor, tortured brute. For she knew that there was no other horse in the barn or about the camp. But he was quietly loosening his cinch, lifting down the heavy Mexican saddle, removing the bit from his horse's mouth.
"What are you going to do?" She bit her lips after the question, but it had leaped out involuntarily.
"I'm going to leave him here for the present. The wound will heal up after a while."
With the saddle thrown over his own shoulders, he ran a gentle hand over the soft nose of his horse which was thrust affectionately against his side, and turned away. She watched him, expecting him to go back to the barn to leave his saddle and bridle. But instead he set his face toward the hills beyond the cabin, where she supposed the trail was.
"I'll pick up another horse at the next ranch," he offered casually by way of explanation. "And we had better hit the trail. It's getting late."
Wordlessly she followed, her eyes held, fascinated by the great, tall bulk of him swinging on in front of her, carrying the heavy saddle with as little care to its weight as if he had been entirely unconscious of it, as no doubt such a man could be. She knew that already he had ridden sixty miles today and that it was seven miles farther to the ranch where he would get another horse. And yet there he strode on, swiftly, as though he had rested all day and now were going to walk the matter of a few yards.
She could not understand this man, whom, since she must, she followed. Had he not told her there in the cabin when he had played at hiding his identity from her, that he knew she was armed? And yet, encumbered with the saddle upon his shoulder, his right hand carrying the bridle, he turned his back square upon her with no glance to see if she were even now covering him with her revolver. And had she not called him a coward, thought him a coward? Was this the way a coward should act?
Again and again during those first minutes her hand crept to the bosom of her dress. Did he know it? she wondered. Was he laughing at her, knowing that she could not bring herself to the point of actually shooting? But then, she might cover him, call to him that she would shoot if he made her, and so force him to return the money he had stolen.
"He would laugh at me," she told herself each time, her anger at him and at herself rising higher and higher. "He would know that I could not kill him. Not in cold blood, this way!"
So Buck Thornton strode on, grim in the savage silence which gripped him, on through the shadows and out into the moonlight beyond the trees, and she followed in silence. There were times when she hated him so that she thought that she could shoot, shoot to kill. His very going with her angered her. Was it not more play-acting, as insolent as anything he could do, as insolent as his kissing her had been! She grew red and went white over it. It was as though he were laughing into her face, making sport of her, saying, "I am a gentleman, you see. I could stay here all night, and you would have to stay with me! But I am not taking advantage of you; I am walking seven miles over a hard trail, carrying a pack like a mule, that you may sleep tonight under the same roof with another woman."
Now she was tempted to wheel her horse, to turn back, to camp alone somewhere out there in the woods, or to ride the thirty miles back to Dry Town. And now, remembering the bank notes which had been taken from her, remembering the insult in the cabin, she held on after him, resolved that she would not lose sight of this man, that she would see him handed over to justice when she could taunt him, saying: "I didn't shoot you, you see, because I am a woman and not a tough. But I have given you into hands that are not woman's hands, because I hate you so!"
Her horse carried her on at a swift walk, but she did not have to draw rein to keep from passing Thornton. His long stride was so smooth, regular, swift and tireless that it soon began to amaze her. They had passed through the little valley in which Harte's place stood, and entered a dark cañon leading into the steeper hills. The trail was uneven, and now and then very steep. Yet Thornton pushed on steadily with no slowing in the swift gait, no sign to tell that he felt fatigue in muscles of back or legs.
"He must be made of iron," she marvelled.
In an hour they had come to the top of a ridge, and Thornton stopped, tossing his saddle to the ground. He had not once spoken since they left the Harte place. Now with quick fingers he made his cigarette. She stopped a dozen paces from him, and though one would have said that she was not looking at him, saw the flare of his match, glimpsed the hard set lines of his face, and knew that he would not speak until she had spoken. And the lines of her own face grew hard, and she turned away from him, feeling a quick spurt of anger that she had so much as looked at him when he had not turned his eyes upon her. He smoked his cigarette, swept up saddle and bridle, and moved on, striking over the ridge and down upon the other side.
It was perhaps ten minutes later when she saw, far off to the left, the glimmer of a light, lost it through the trees, found it again and knew that it told of some habitation. They came abreast of a branch trail, leading toward the lighted window; the girl's eager eyes found it readily, and then noted that Thornton was passing on as though he had seen neither light nor trail. She spoke hurriedly, saying:
"Isn't that the place? Where the light is?"
"No," he told her colourlessly and without turning. "That's the Henry place. We're going on to Smith's."
"Why don't we stop here? It's nearer. And I'm tired."
"We can stop and rest," he replied. "Then we had better go on. It's not very much further now."
"But why not here?" she cried insistently in sudden irritation that upon all matters this man dictated to her and dictated so assuredly. "One place is as good as another."
"This one isn't, Miss Waverly. There's a tough lot here, and there are no women among them. So we'll have to make it to Smith's. Do you want to rest a while?"
"No," she cried sharply. "Let's hurry and get it over with!"
He inclined his head gravely and they went on. And again her anger rose against this man who seemed over and over to wish to remind her that he was a gentleman. As though she had forgotten any little incident connected with him!
Again they made their way through lights and shadows, down into ragged cuts in the hills, over knolls and ridges, through a forest where raindrops were still dripping from the thick leaves and where she knew that without him she never could have found her way. And not once more did they speak to each other until, unexpectedly for her, they came out of the wood and fairly upon a squat cabin with a light running out to meet them through the square of a window.
"Smith's place," he informed her briefly.
Already three dogs had run to meet them, with much barking and simulated fierceness, and a man and a woman had come to the door.
"Hello," called the man. "Who is it?"
"Hello, John. It's Thornton. Howdy, Mrs. Smith." Thornton tossed his saddle to the ground, pushed down one of the dogs that had recognized him and was leaping up on him. "Mrs. Smith, this is Miss Waverly from Dry Town. A friend of the Templetons. She'll be grateful if you could take her in for the night."
Man and wife came out, shook hands with the girl, the woman led her into the cabin, and Smith took her horse. Then the rancher saw Thornton's saddle.
"Where's your horse?" he asked quickly.
"Back at Harte's. Lame."
In a very few words he told of a deep knife cut beneath the fetlock, explained Miss Waverly's presence with him, and ended by demanding,
"Who do you suppose did that trick for me, John? It's got me buffaloed."
Smith shook his head thoughtfully.
"By me, Buck," he answered slowly. "Most likely some jasper you've had trouble with an' is too yeller to get even any other way. I haven't seen any of your friends from Hill's Corners stickin' around though. Have you?"
"No. But Miss Waverly saw somebody on the trail the other side of Harte's this afternoon. Mistook him for me until I told her. A big man about my size riding a sorrel. Know who it was?"
Again Smith shook his head.
"Can't call him to mind, Buck. It might be Huston for size, but he hasn't got a sorrel in his string, an' then he's took on too much fat lately to be mistook for you. Go on inside. You'll want to eat, I guess. I'll put up the lady's horse an' be with you in two shakes."
"Thanks, John. But I had supper back at Harte's. Can you let me have a horse in the morning? I'll send him back by one of the boys."
"Sure. Take the big roan. An' you don't have to send him back, either.
I'm ridin' that way myself tomorrow, an' I'll drop by an' get him."
"Which way are you ridin'?"
"To the Bar X. I got word last week three or four of my steers was over there. I want to see about 'em. Before," he added drily, "they get any closer to Dead Man's."
Thornton's nod indicated that he understood. And then, suddenly, he said,
"If you're going that way you can see Miss Waverly through, can't you?
She's going to the Corners."
Smith whistled softly.
"Now what the devil is the like of her goin' to that town for?" he demanded.
"I don't know the answer. But she's going there." And as partial explanation, he added, "She's Henry Pollard's niece."
For a moment Smith pondered the information in silence. Then his only reference to it was a short spoken, "Well, she don't look it! Anyway, that's her look-out, an' I'll see her within half a dozen miles of the border. You'll turn off this side the Poison Hole, huh?"
"I'll turn off right here, and right now. I've got a curiosity, John," and his voice was harder than Winifred Waverly had ever heard it, "to know a thing or two about the way my horse went lame. I'm going to sling my saddle on your roan and take a little ride back to Harte's. Maybe I can pick up that other jasper's trail in the cañon back there."
The two men went down to the stable, and while the rancher watered and fed the pony Thornton roped the big roan in the fenced-in pasture. Ten minutes after he had come to the Smith place he had saddled and ridden back along the trail toward Harte's.
The two women in the cabin looked up as Smith came in.
"Where's Mr. Thornton?" his wife asked.
"He's gone back," Smith told her. He drew out his chair, sat down and filled his pipe. Before Mrs. Smith's surprise could find words the girl had started to her feet, crying quickly:
"Gone back! Where?"
"To Harte's. A man knifed his horse back there." He stopped, lighted his pipe, and then said slowly, with much deep thoughtfulness, "If I was that man I'd ride some tonight! I'd keep right on ridin' until I'd put about seven thousand miles between me an' Buck Thornton. An' then … well, then, I guess I'd jest naturally dig a hole an' crawl in it so deep nothin' but my gun stuck out!"
"What did he say?" she asked breathlessly.
"That's jest it, Miss. He didn't say much!"
CHAPTER XI
THE BEDLOE BOYS
All thoughts of denouncing Buck Thornton before these people fled before the girl had followed the rancher's wife into the cabin. They spoke of him only in tones warm with friendship and with something more than mere friendship, an admiration that was tinged with respect. They had known him since first he had come into this country, and although that had been only a little more than a year ago, they had grown to know him as men and women in these far-out places come to know each other, swiftly, intimately.
He was a favourite topic of conversation and they talked of him naturally, readily, and Mrs. Smith, fluently. She recounted, not guessing how eagerly the girl was listening to every word, many an episode which in the aggregate had given him the reputation he bore throughout these wild miles of cattle land, the reputation of a man who was hard, hard as rock "on the outside," as she put it, hard inside, too, when they drove him to it, but naturally as soft-hearted as a baby. She wished she had a boy like him! Why, when she and John hit hard luck, last year, what with the cattle getting diseased first and her and John getting laid up next, flat of their backs with the grip, that man was an angel in britches and spurs if there ever was an angel in anything! He'd nursed them and cooked for them, and lifted her out of her bed while he made it up himself, just as smooth and nice as you could have done, Miss. And he rode clean into town for a doctor, and brought him out and a lot of store stuff that was nice for sick folks to eat. And he'd paid the doctor, too, and laughed and said he'd come some day and borry the money back when he got busted playing poker!
"And then, all of a sudden, when you'd have thought he was soft that way clean through," she went on, her eyes blazing now at the memory of it, "them Bedloe boys come over lookin' for trouble. An' Buck sure gave it to them!"
"Tell me about it," the girl said quickly. "Who are the Bedloe boys?
What did they do?"
"The Bedloe boys," Mrs. Smith ran on, eager in the recounting, "belong over to the Corners. Or the Corners belongs to them, I don't know which you'd say. Never heard of them boys? Well, most folks has. There used to be lots like the Bedloe boys when I was a girl, Miss, but thank gracious they're getting thinned out powerful fast. First an' last an' all the time they're rowdies an' gunfighters an' bad men. There's more of their kind in Hill's Corners, but these are the worst of the outfit. They keep close in to the Corners, seeing it's right on the state line, where they can dodge from one state to another when it comes handy. Which is right often.
"There's three of 'em. Charley an' Ed an' the youngest one everybody calls the Kid. That's three an' I guess there's a good many more would be glad of the chance to shoot Buck up. I guess the Bedloes heard that time that John was sick. Anyway, they come over, all three of 'em, hunting trouble. Buck was out in the barn, feeding the horses, an' they didn't know he was on the ranch. The Kid, he's the youngest of the mess an' the worst an' the han'somest, with them little yeller curls, an' his daredevil blue eyes, come on ahead, riding his horse right up to the door, yelling like a drunk Injun an' cussing so it made a woman wonder how any woman could ever have a son like him. He tried to ride his horse right in the door, an' when it got scared of me an' John lyin' in bed, an' rared up, the Kid hit it over the head with the gun in his hand, an' slipped out'n the saddle, laughin' at it stagger.
"But he come on in an' Charley come in, too. Ed Bedloe was out in the far corral, gettin' ready to throw the gate open an' turn out the cows an' stampede 'em off'n the ranch. What for?" She lifted her bony shoulders. "Oh, nothin'. They'd jus' had trouble with my John about six months before, an' was taking a good chance to smash up things in general about the ranch. They swore they was going to burn the cabin an' the barn an' scatter the stock an' do anything else they could put their hands to. An' while they was in here, cussing an' abusing my John, who couldn't even get up an' grab his shotgun in the corner, an' insulting me all they could lay their dirty tongues to, there's a step at the door right behind 'em, light as a cat, an' here's Buck come in from the barn.
"I wish you'd seen that man's eyes! Then you'd know what I mean when I say he gets hard, hard an' bitter sometimes. An' his voice—it was so low an' soft you might 'a' thought he was putting a baby to sleep with it! There was two of them boys, big an' ugly-mean, an' they both had guns on, in sight. There was jus' one of Buck Thornton, an' I didn't know yet he ever toted a gun. He uses his hands, mostly, I reckon, Buck does. He didn't say much. He just got them two hands of his on Charley Bedloe's neck, an' I thought he was goin' to break it sure. An' Charley got flung clean out in the yard before the Kid had finished going for his gun! You wouldn't believe a man could be that quick.
"Quick? It wasn't nothin' to his next play. I tell you the Kid's hand was on the way to his gun an' Buck didn't have a gun on him, you'd have said. An' then he did have a gun, an' John an' me didn't even see where he got it, an' he didn't seem to be in a hurry, an' he'd shot before the Kid could more'n pull his gun up!"
"He killed him?"
"He could have killed him just as easy as a man rolls a cigareet! There wasn't six feet between 'em. Only men like Buck Thornton don't kill men unless they got to, I guess. But he shot the Kid in the arm, takin' them chances as cool as an icicle; an' when the Kid dropped his gun an' then grabbed at it with his other hand, Buck shot him in the left arm the same way. An' then, using his hands, he threw him out. An' I don't believe Charley Bedloe more'n got on his hands an' knees outside! An' then somehow Buck has a gun in each hand, and has stepped outside, too. And I reckon the Bedloe boys saw the same thing in his eyes me an' John saw there when he come back in. Anyway, they got on their horses an' we ain't seen hide nor hair of 'em since."
Miss Waverly sat very still, leaning forward a little, her eyes big and bright upon the eyes of this other woman. The man, despite her calmer judgment, appealed to her imagination….
"You'd think," Mrs. Smith went on, "that that man would be tired enough for one day, wouldn't you? Ridin' all day, walking seven mile toting that big saddle on his back; an' now he goes an' starts out to ride the Lord knows how far. What do you suppose a man like him is made out'n?"
Smith answered her out of the corner of his mouth from which a slow curl of smoke was mounting:
"Sand, mostly."
* * * * *
No, the girl could not say to these people that which she had to say of Buck Thornton. She switched the conversation abruptly, asking them to tell her of Hill's Corners.
She knew something of the place already. Mr. Templeton had told her a great deal when insistently urging her not to do the thing she had determined to do and she had thought that he exaggerated merely in order to turn her aside from her purpose. She had even heard far-reaching rumours of the border town in Crystal City, where her own home had been for the five years since the deaths of her parents. These rumours, too, she had supposed inflated as rumours will be when they are bad and have travelled far. Now it was a little anxiously that she asked for further information, and not altogether because she sought some new topic.
"She's Henry Pollard's niece, Mary," Smith said rather hurriedly. The girl glanced at him sharply. There was something in his tone which told her that he was warning his wife, cautioning her to speak guardedly of Pollard or not at all.
When, an hour later, she went to bed, she lay long sleepless, wondering, nervously dreading the morrow. For these people who should know gave Hill's Corners the same name that Mr. Templeton had given it, the same name it bore as far as Crystal City and beyond. It was one of those far removed towns which are the last stand of the lawless, the ultimate breastwork before the final ditch into which in his hour the gunfighter has finally gone down. Desperate characters, men wanted in two states and perhaps in many more, flocked here where they found the one chance to live out their riotous lives riotously. Here they could "straddle" the line, and when wanted upon one side slip to the other. And hereabouts, for very many miles in all directions, the big cattle men, the small ranchers, the "little fellows," all slept "with their eyes open and their gunlocks oiled."
But, she tried to tell herself, Henry Pollard had sent for her, he was her own mother's brother, he would not have had her come here if it were not safe. He had written clearly enough, had told her in his letter that he could not leave the Corners, that he must have the money, that there were hold-up men in the country who would not hesitate to rob the stage if they learned that he had five thousand dollars in it, that she could bring the bills which Templeton would have ready for her and that there would be no suspicion, no danger for her. And she would believe her uncle, would believe that these people had had trouble with the Bedloes and perhaps others in the town, and that they warped the truth in the telling. For was any more faith to be put in the word of the Smiths than in that of Buck Thornton himself? And did she not know him for what he was, a man who was not above assaulting a defenceless girl, not above robbery?
Wearied out, she went to sleep, her last waking thoughts trailing off through the night after a man who could laugh like a boy, whose eyes could grow very gentle or very, very hard and inexorable.
In the morning John Smith's first words to her drove again a hot, angry flush into her face. For he told her that Thornton, before he would ride away last night, had made sure that Smith would accompany her, showing her the way and "taking care of her." She bit her lip and turned away. She was grateful that soon breakfast was eaten, the horses saddled and once more she was riding out toward the south-east. Smith rode at her elbow.
All morning they rode slowly, over rough trails in the mountains where a horse found scant foothold, where they wound down into deep, close walled canyons where the sunlight was dim at noon, where the pines stood tall and straight in thick ranks untouched by an ax. They came out into little valleys, past a half dozen ranch houses, saw many herds of cattle and horses, crossed Indian Gully, topped another steep ridge and at last looked down upon the Poison Hole ranch.
The ranch lay off to the east as they looked down upon it, a great sweep of rolling hills sprinkled with big oaks looking like shrubs from their vantage point, cut in two by the Big Little River, along the banks of which and out in the meadow lands many herds of cattle ranged free. Rising in his stirrup Smith pointed out to her the spot near the centre of the big range where Buck Thornton's "range house" was, a dozen miles away over the rolling country. And then he swung about and pointed to the south, saying shortly:
"Yonder's the country you're lookin' for. We strike due south here along the edge of the Poison Hole ranch. When we get to that next string of lulls you can see the hills of three states, all at once and the same time. And you can see the town you're headed for; it sets on top a sort of hill. Down yonder," and he swung his long arm off to the south-west, "is the Bar X outfit; that's as far as I'm going. But, if you want company, one of the boys will sure be glad to ride on with you. The Corners is only about a dozen mile from there on."
CHAPTER XII
RATTLESNAKE POLLARD
IT was barely noon, the air clear, the sky cloudless, when Winifred Waverly rode into Hill's Corners. She had shaken her head at the suggestion of further escort. Here, in the open country and in the full sunlight, she was grateful for the opportunity of being alone.
At the foot of a gentle eminence she entered the narrow, winding street of the town, a crooked little town physically both in the matter of this meandering alley-like thoroughfare and in the matter of the hastily builded, unprepossessing houses; a crooked town in its innermost character, it was easy to believe. On either hand as she rode forward were low, squat, ugly shacks jammed tight together or with narrow passageways between their unlovely walls, these spaces more often than not cluttered and further disfigured by piles of rusty tins, old clothing and shoes and other discarded refuse. As she rode farther she saw now and then the more pretentious buildings, some with the false fronts which deceived nobody, the houses appearing shoddy and aged and sinister, one here and there deserted and given over to ruin, disintegration and spiders spinning unmolested in dark corners.
The next peculiar impression created upon her was that some evil charm was over the place, that in the sweet sunlight it lay drugged, that in those rows of slatternly shacks where the sunlight did not enter men either hid in dark secrecy or lay in some unnatural stupour. The whole settlement seemed preternaturally quiet; the fancy came to her that the town had died long ago and that she merely looked on its ghost.
She had shrunk before now at the thought of men coming to the doors to stare after her, and perhaps even to call coarsely after her; now it seemed the dreariest thing in all the world to ride down this dirty, muddy street and see no man or woman or child, not so much as a saddled horse at a hitching pole. She came abreast of the most pretentious building of Hill's Corners; its swing doors were closed, but from within she heard a low, monotonous hum of languid voices. Upon the crazy false front, a thing to draw the wondering eye of a stranger, was a gigantic and remarkably poorly painted picture of a bear holding a glass in one deformed paw, a bottle in the other, while the drunken letters of the superfluous sign spelled: "The Brown Bear Saloon." Almost directly across the street from the Brown Bear was a rival edifice which though slightly smaller was no less squat and ugly and which bore its own highly ambitious sign: a monster hand clutching a monster whiskey glass, with the illuminating words beneath, "The Here's How Saloon." That the two works of art were from the same brain and hand there was no doubting. In the inscriptions the n's and s's were all made backwards, presenting an interesting and entirely suitable air of maudlin drunkenness.
The girl hurried by. There were other saloons, so many, so close together that, used as she was to frontier towns, she wondered at it; she saw other buildings whose signs informed her they were store and post-office, drug store, blacksmith shop and restaurant. And now the first visible token of life, a thin spiral of smoke from "Dick's Oyster House." She passed it, pushing her horse to a gallop. She had seen the two or three men upon the high stools at the counter taking their coffee and bacon. They had swung about quickly, like one man, at the cook's grin and quiet word. One of them even called out something as she passed; another laughed.
As she rode down the tortuous street, fairly racing now, the blood whipped into her face, she caught a glimpse of a man standing by his horse, preparing to swing up into the saddle. His eyes followed her with a look in them easy to read and unpleasant; something too ardently admiring to be trusted. She had seen the man's face. He was a big man, broad and straight and powerful, builded like a Vulcan. He was branded unmistakably as a rowdy; his very carriage, a sort of conscious swagger, the bold impudence of his face told that. The laughing face stood out before her eyes as she rode on, evil and reckless and handsome, with very bright blue eyes and hair curling in little yellow rings about the forehead from which the hat was pushed back. It was her first glimpse of the youngest of the Bedloe boys, the worst of them the "Kid."
She knew that she would find her uncle's house at the end of the street. Mr. Templeton had told her that, and had described it so that she could have no trouble in knowing it. And as she rode on, making the curve of the long, crooked lane which had come to be known as Dead Man's Alley, she found time to wonder that such a town could be so silent and deserted with the sun so high in the sky. For she had not learned that here men did in their way what men do in larger cities, that they turned the day topsy turvy, that the street seethed with surging life through late afternoon and night and the dark hours of the morning, that the saloons stood brightly lighted then, that their doors were filled with men coming and going, that games ran high, voices rose high, while life, as these men knew it, ran higher still.
At last she came to Henry Pollard's house. It stood back from the street in a little yard notable for the extreme air of untidiness the rank weeds gave it and for its atmosphere of semi-desertion among its few stunted, twisted, unpruned pear trees. The fence about it had once been green, but that was long, long ago. The doors were closed, the shades close drawn over the windows, the house still and gloom-infested even in the sunlight.
Stronger and higher within her welled her misgivings; for the first time she admitted to herself that she was sorry that she had tried to do this thing which Mr. Templeton had told her was madness. She hesitated, sitting her horse at the gate, with half a mind to whirl and ride back whence she had come. And then, with an inward rebuke to her own timidity, she dismounted and hurried along the weed bordered walk, and knocked at the door.
There came quick answer, a man's voice, heavy and curt, crying:
"Who is it?"
"Are you Mr. Pollard?" she called back, her voice a little eager, more than a little anxious.
"Yes." There was a note as of excitement in the voice. "Is that you,
Winifred?"
"Yes, uncle. I … I …"
She faltered, hesitated, and broke off pitifully. She had heard the eagerness in Pollard's voice, guessed at what it was that he was thinking, knew that now she would have to tell him that she had failed in the errand which he had entrusted to her, that she had let a man rob her of the five thousand dollars of which he stood so urgently in need. Oh, why had she attempted to do it, why had she not listened to Mr. Templeton? And, now, what would her uncle say?
"Just a minute, Winifred. I'm a little under the weather and am in bed. Now." She heard no footsteps; yet there was the noise of a wooden bar being drawn away from the door. "Come in. You'll pardon me, being in bed, my dear. And fasten the door after you, will you, please?"
She stepped across the threshold and into the darkened house, her heart beating quickly. As she slipped the bar back into its place she saw that there was fastened to the end of it a cord which passed through a pulley over the door and then ran down the hallway, disappearing through another door at the left. So, following the cord, she went on slowly.
The outside of the house had given her a certain impression. Now, in a flash, that impression was superseded by a new one. Here was the home of a man of means, the heavy, rich furniture spoke of that, the painting there in the living room into which she glanced, the tastefully papered walls, the thick carpet muffling her footfalls. If only the curtains were thrown back, if only the sun were looking in upon it all!
And now the man. Henry Pollard, whom she had not seen since she was a very little girl and then only during his short visit at her father's house, struck her as being in some way not entirely unlike this habitation of his. A gentleman gone to seed, was that it?
His manner was courteous, courtly even, his speech soft, his eyes gentle as they rested upon her, gentle and yet eager. There was something fine about his face, about the eyes and high forehead, and yet alongside it there was something else which drove a little pain into the girl's eyes. The mouth was hard, there were deep, set lines about it and about the eyes there was a hint of cruelty which not even his smile hid entirely. And though she strove to smile back bravely as she came forward to kiss him, she knew that she was disappointed, and a little uneasy.
She knew that Henry Pollard must be about fifty; she saw that he looked to be sixty. He had pulled himself up against his pillows and had drawn on a dressing gown to cover his shoulders. He was well groomed; he had had a shave yesterday; he did not look sick. But he did look old, like a man who had aged prematurely and suddenly; and he did look worried and tired, as though he had not slept well last night.
"I am alone just now," he smiled. "Mrs. Riddell is keeping house for me,
but I heard her go out a little while ago. For something for breakfast,
I suppose. You are looking well, Winifred. I knew you would be pretty.
Now, sit down."
No word yet of her errand, no query as to its success. She was grateful to him for that. She wanted a moment, time in which to feel that she knew him a little bit, before she could tell him. But she saw in his eyes that he was curbing his eagerness, and that she would have to tell him in a moment.
"I am sorry that you are sick, Uncle Henry," she said hastily, taking the chair near his bed. "It isn't anything serious, is it?"
"No, no." His answer was as hasty as her question had been. "Just rheumatism, Winifred. I'm subject to it here of late."
Then she saw that he had sat stiffly, that his shoulder, the left shoulder, was carried awkwardly and was evidently bandaged.
"I'm sorry," she said again. And then, determined to tell him before he should ask, "Uncle, I…." Oh, it was so hard to say with him looking at her with those keen, bright eyes of his! "You should have got some one else to help you. I have failed…. I have lost your money for you!"
She dropped her face into her hands, trembling, striving to keep her tears back, feeling now, as she had not felt before, as if she had been altogether to blame for all that had happened, as though it had been her carelessness that had cost her uncle his five thousand dollars. And when at last he did not speak and she looked up again, she saw that his eyes had not changed, that there was no surprise in them, that if he felt anything whatever he hid it.
"Don't cry about it, my dear," he said gently. He even smiled a little. "Tell me about it. You were robbed of it? Before you had more than got out of light of Dry Town?"
"How do you know?" she cried.
"I don't know, my dear. But I do know that the stage came on through, with no attempt at a hold-up, and I guessed that our little ruse didn't fool anybody. When I got the empty strong box from the bank I knew pretty well what to look for."
"But," she told him, flushed with her hope, "we'll get it back! For I know who robbed me, I can swear to him!"
Pollard's hand, lying upon the bed spread, had shut tight. She noticed that and no other sign of emotion.
"And I know!" he said harshly. "Yes, I'll get it back! Now, tell me how it happened."
"It was a man named Buck Thornton…."
She saw the quick change of light in his eyes and in the instant knew that if Buck Thornton hated Henry Pollard he was hated no less in return. Further, she saw that back of the hatred there was a sort of silent laughter as though the thing she had said had pleased this man as no other thing could have pleased him, that in some way which she could not understand, this information had moved him as he had not been moved by news of his heavy loss. And she wondered.
"You are ready to swear to that?" he asked sharply, his eyes searching and steady and eager upon hers. "You will swear that it was Thornton who robbed you?"
"Yes," she cried hotly as she remembered the insult of a kiss and in the memory forgot the robbery itself.
"I'll get him now," he muttered. "Both ways; going and coming! Tell me all about it, Winifred."
She began, speaking swiftly, telling him of her meeting with Thornton at the bank, of her suspicion that he had overheard her talk with the banker. Then of her second meeting with the man after she had seen him on the trail behind her, the encounter at the Harte cabin…. A sudden banging of the kitchen door, and he had stopped her abruptly, putting his hand warningly upon her arm.
"Later. It can wait. That is Mrs. Riddell. She will show you to your room. And it will be better, my dear, if you say nothing to her. Or to any one else just yet."
She got to her feet and went to the door. Turning there, to smile back at her uncle, she saw that his pillows had slipped a little and that under them lay a heavy revolver. And she surprised upon the man's face a look which was gone so quickly that she wondered if she had seen right in the darkened room, a look so filled with malicious triumph. Instead of being profoundly disturbed by the tidings of her adventure, the man appeared positively to gloat…. Now, more than ever, did she regret that she had come to the town of Dead Man's Alley.
CHAPTER XIII
THE RANCH ON BIG LITTLE RIVER
Buck Thornton had returned to the Poison Hole ranch. But first he had ridden from the Smith place down the trail to Harte's, where he made swift, careful search for some sign to tell him who was the man who had lamed his horse maliciously and seemingly with no purpose to be gained. Further, he had sought for tracks to tell him from where this man had come, where he had gone. When he had found nothing he went, he hardly knew why, to the cabin, pushed the door open and entered. And instead of learning anything definitely now he was merely the more perplexed. By the fireplace lay a chair, overturned. There had been some sort of hurried movement here, perhaps a struggle. The table had been pushed to one side, one leg catching in the rag rug and rumpling it. He struck a match, lighted the lamp and sought for some explanation. When had this struggle, if struggle there had been, occurred? It must have been after he and Miss Waverly had set out on the trail to Smith's, he told himself positively. Then there had been two people here in the meantime, for it takes two people to make a tussel. And they had gone. Who could it be? Was he after all to find a clue to the man who had maimed his horse?
Looking about him curiously it chanced that he found something that drove a puzzled frown into his eyes. It had caught in the frayed edge of the rug, and to have been so caught and so left meant that it had been done during the struggle he had already pictured. He took it up into his hand, trying to understand. For it was the rowel of a spur, a tiny, sharp, shining rowel that had come loose from a spur he remembered very well. And he remembered, too, that Winifred Waverly had had her spurs on when she came out to him at the barn!
"It happened while I was out after the horses!" He sat down, the shining spiked wheel lying in the palm of his hand, his brows drawn heavily. "While I was out there … it happened. Some jasper came in here, there was some sort of a tussle … and she didn't say a damned word about it!"
Yes, he was certain now that something had happened during the brief time between his going out for the horses and the girl's coming to him at the barn. Something that had changed her, that had killed her friendliness toward him, that had made her cold and cruelly different.
"The same man who slipped his knife across my horse's foot came in here and saw her while I was out for the horses," he said slowly. "The same man. It must have been. And she could tell me who it was and she didn't. Why? After they had struggled here, too! Why?"
He could see no reason in it all, no reason for her silence, no reason for a man's malicious cruelty to a horse. Nor were these the only things which he could not understand. Groping for the truth, he began carefully to run over the things which had seemed strange to him and which now struck him as being connected in some plan darkly hidden.
The girl was Henry Pollard's niece. He began with that fact. She was on her way to Pollard's and on an errand which the banker Templeton had called mad and dangerous. Some man had followed her, a man whom she had twice seen on the trail and whose outfit resembled Thornton's, resembled it too closely to be the result of chance! The same headstall with the red tassel, the same grey neck-handkerchief, a sorrel horse….
"By God!" whispered the cowboy, a sudden light in his eyes, "he lamed my horse so it would limp the same as his! So she'd be sure she had seen me on the trail behind her! And when she came out and saw my horse limping she knew I had lied to her!"
But why? Why? What lay back of all this?
In the end he put out the light, slipped the spur rowel into his vest pocket, and went out to his horse. Then when an hour's search brought him no nearer to the hidden truth for which he was groping, he gave up trying to pick up this other man's trail in the rocky soil about Harte's place and turned back toward the south-east and his own ranch.
"I'm going to have a talk with you, Miss Grey Eyes," he said softly. "I've got to give you back your spur, and I'm going to ask you some questions."
He rode late into the night, stopped for a few hours under the stars with saddle blanket for bed, and in the dawn pushed on again.
For the few days which followed he had, in the stress of range work, little time for thought of the riddle which had been set for him to solve, and when he had time after the day's work he was tired and ready for sleep. He was working short handed now for the very simple and not uncommon reason that he was spending no dollar which he did not have to spend. The payments he had already made to Pollard had been heavy for him, and there was yet another five thousand dollars to be forthcoming in six months. The contract was clear upon the point, and he knew that if he failed to meet his obligation Henry Pollard would be vastly pleased, being in a position to keep the fifteen thousand which had been paid to him and to get his range back to boot.
Perhaps because Henry Pollard had never lived upon the ranch during the twenty years he had owned it improvements were few and poor. There was the barn, too small now, which must come down in another year; there was the old corral which was little used since Thornton had had the newer, bigger one builded. Then, for ranch house, there was a single room cabin, its walls of heavy logs from the hills at the head of the Big Little River, its door of great thick planks rough and nail studded, its roof of shakes. A hundred yards from it, at the foot of the knoll upon which the ranch house stood, was a similar cabin, a dozen feet longer, serving as the men's bunk house.
Big Little River wound about the foot of the knoll, separating Thornton's cabin from the bunk house, three or four feet deep here and spanned by a crude footbridge. In its windings it made a sort of horseshoe about the knoll so that looking out from the door of the cattle man's cabin one saw the sluggish water to east, west and north.
Upon the third morning after his return to the range Thornton rose early, scowled sleepily at the little alarm clock whose strident clamour had startled him out of his sleep at four o'clock, kicked off his pajamas and with towel in hand started down to the river for his morning plunge. Subconsciously he noted a scrap of white paper lying upon the hewn log which served as doorstep, but he paid no heed to it. He had his dip, diving from the big rock from which most mornings of the year he dived into the deepest part of the stream; and in a little came back through the brightening daylight rosy and tingling and with the last webs of sleep washed out of his brain. Again he noted the paper; this time he stooped and caught it up. For now he saw that it was folded, carefully placed where he must see it, pinned down with a sharp pointed horseshoe nail.
"Now who's sending me letters this way?" he demanded of himself.
And he flushed a little and called himself a fool because he knew that he half expected to find that it was a note from a certain girl with unforgettable grey eyes. But before he had read the few words, as soon in fact as his eyes had fallen upon the uneven, laboriously constructed letters of the lead-pencilled scrawl, he knew that this did not come from her hand. The signature puzzled him; it consisted of two letters, initials evidently, a very large j, not capitalized, followed by a very small capital C.
"Now, who's J.C.?" he muttered. "I can call to mind no J.C. who would be writing me letters!"
As he read the note a look of astonishment came into his eyes. It ran:
"Deer buck, I am shure up against hard luck. Dont know nobody but you can give me a hand remember that time down in El paso I was yore freind. Come to old shack by Poison hole tonight & dont tell nobody & bring sum grub Buck remember El paso.
"j.c.
"p.s. I was yore freind buck."
Thornton remembered. He went slowly about his dressing, turning again and again to look at the note he had placed upon his little pine table. That had been five years ago. He was riding between Juarez and El Paso, having just sold a herd of steers from the range he had owned in Texas then. He had been detained in the Mexican town until after dark, and before its lights had ceased winking behind him he had known that though his precaution of taking a check instead of gold had saved his money to him it had not saved him from coming very close to death. There were still three scars, two in the shoulder, one in the right side, to show where the bullets had bitten deep into him, from behind. He had been searched swiftly, roughly, his clothing torn by the hurried fingers of the man who had shot him.
It had been close to midnight when his consciousness came back to him. A little man, hard featured but gentle fingered, was working over him. It was Jimmie Clayton. And Clayton had found the crumpled check in the darkness, had gotten the wounded man on his own horse, had taken him to El Paso, and finally had saved his life, nursing him, working over him day and night for the two weeks in which his life was in danger.
Since then Thornton had seen little of Clayton. He had known even at the time of the shooting that the man was as hard a character as his close-set, little eyes and weasel face bespoke him; he had come to know him as an insatiate gambler, the pitiful sort of gambler who is too much of a drunkard to be more than his opponent's dupe at cards. He had found him to be a brawler and very much of a ruffian. But though he did not close his eyes to these things they did not matter to him. For gratitude and a sense of loyalty were two of the strong silver threads that went to make up the mesh of Buck Thornton's nature, and it was enough to him that little Jimmie Clayton had played the part of friend in a town where friends were scarce and at a time when but for a friend he would have died.
It was not alone the fact of Clayton's turning up here and now that surprised the cattle man; it was the fact of his turning up anywhere. For he had thought that Clayton, weak natured and so very often the other man's tool, was serving time in the Texas penitentiary. For, three years ago, rumour had brought to him word of a sheriff's clean-up, and the names of three men who had been working a crude confidence game, bold rather than shrewd, and Jimmie Clayton's name was one of the three. He had heard only after the men had been convicted and sentenced for five years apiece, and had at the time regretted that he could not have known sooner so that in some way he might have returned the favour he had never forgotten.
At last having dressed, he shoved the letter into his pocket, and went down to the bunk house for breakfast. To the cook and to the three men already at the table he had little to say, so full were his thoughts of Jimmie Clayton. He was wondering what "hard luck" the little fellow had run up against, why he was hiding out at a place like the Poison Hole shack, how he had gotten the letter to the range cabin, and, if he had brought it himself, why he had not made himself known last night.
He gave his few, succinct orders for the day, made his hurried meal, and went to the corral for his horse. And all that day he rode hard out in the broken country where the eastern end of the range ran up and back into the gorges of the mountains, shifting herd, collecting stragglers, bringing them down into the meadow lands where the feed was abundant now that he had sold the cattle he had had ranging there in order that he might raise the money to make up the five thousand dollars for Henry Pollard.
As he rode he spoke seldom to the horse running under him or to the boys with whom he worked, his thoughts flying now to another horse, lamed from a knife cut, now to a girl whose spur rowel he carried in his vest pocket, now to a man whose appealing letter he carried in another pocket. And he was glad when the day was done and the boys raced away through the dusk to their supper.
Not infrequently did he ride on after he had told the others to "knock off," working himself harder than he could ask them to work, riding late to look at the water holes or find a new pasture in some of the little mountain valleys or to bring in a fresh string of saddle horses for the morrow's riding. So now, as darkness gathered, he watched the boys scamper away to their food and smoke and bunks, and rode on slowly toward the north.
He chose this time, the thickening darkness before moonrise, for he had caught the insistent plea for secrecy running through the lines of the letter. And so, though he was not a little impatient and curious, he let his tired horse choose its own loitering gait, willing that the night draw down blacker about him.
He crossed the Big Flat, rich grassy land watered by the Big Little River, and struck off into the hills that closed in about it, following the river trail. It was very still, with no sound save the swish of the water against the willows drooping downward from its banks, no light save the dim glimmer of the early stars. For two miles he followed the stream, then left it for a short cut over the ridge, to pick it up again upon the farther side. Now he was in a tiny valley with the mountains close to the spot which gave its name to the range.
Big Little River writhed in from the east, twisted out to the south. And in the shut-in valley it made and left behind it to all but cover the entire floor of the valley a lakelet of very clear water not over a quarter of a mile from edge to edge, but very deep. Upon the far side, a little back and close under the overhanging cliffs, there was a great, jagged-mouthed, yawning hole, of a type not uncommon in this part of the western country, from which heavy, noxious gases drifted sometimes when the wind caught them up, gases which for the most part thickened and made deadly the dark interior. There were skeletons to be seen dimly by daylight down there, ten feet below the surface of the uneven ground, the vaguely phosphorescent bones of jack rabbits that had fallen into this natural trap, of coyotes, even of a young cow that had been overpowered before it could struggle upward along the steep sides. And the odour clinging to the mouth of the hole was indescribably foul and sickening.
Not a pretty place, and yet some man many years ago had builded him a habitation here that was half dugout, half log lean-to. The door of the place faced Poison Hole, and was not two hundred yards from it. The hovel had been in disuse long before Buck Thornton came to the range save as a shelter to some of the wild things of the mountains.
From the southern shore of the lake Thornton stared across the little body of water trying to make out a light to tell him that Clayton was expecting him. But there was no fire, and the stars, reflecting themselves in the natural mirror, failed to show him so much as the outline of the lean-to in the shadows of the cliffs. He turned down into the trail which ran about the shore, passed around the western end of the lake, and riding slowly, his eyes ever watchful about him as was the man's habit, he came at last to the deserted "shack."
CHAPTER XIV
IN THE NAME OF FRIENDSHIP
Twenty yards from the door he drew rein, sitting still, frowning into the darkness. Not for the first time was he realizing that the note might not be from Clayton at all; that some other man could have known of his debt of gratitude to the little fellow who had befriended him five years ago; that the name might have been used to draw him here, alone and very far from any ears to hear, any eyes to see, what might happen. He could name a half dozen men who were not above this sort of thing, men who had, some of them, sworn to "get him." There were the Bedloe boys, the three of them. There were two other men who do not come into this story. There was Henry Pollard.
"And it would be almighty like Pollard to put up a job like this," he told himself grimly. "He could afford to pay a man a good little pile to get me out of the game, and keep the money I've paid him and get back his range besides. And I reckon the Kid would be one of a dozen who would take on the job dirt cheap!"
He reined his horse a little deeper into the shadows. Then he slipped swiftly from the saddle, one end of his thirty-feet rope in his hand, the other end about the horse's neck, and with a quick flick of the quirt sent the animal trotting ahead to swing about and stop when the rope drew taut. He half expected his ruse to draw fire from somewhere in the darkness. Instead there came a low voice, sharp and querulous, through the open door.
"That you, Buck?"
"Yes. That you, Clayton?"
"Yes. Are you alone?"
"Yes."
Then Thornton came on swiftly, coiling his rope as he walked. For he had recognized the voice.
"What's the matter, Jimmie?" He was at the door now, peering in but making nothing of the blot of shadows.
"Come in," Clayton answered. "An' shut the door, Buck. I'll make a light when the door's shut."
He stepped in, dropping his rope, and moving slowly again, his back against the wall. For after all he would not be sure of everything until there was a light, until he saw that he was alone with Clayton.
A match sputtered, making vague shadows as it was held in a cupped hand. It travelled downward to the earthen floor, found the stub of a candle, and then the greater light, poor as it was, drove out the shadows. And Thornton saw that it was Jimmie Clayton, that the man was alone, and that evidently his note had put it mildly when he had said that he had struck "hard luck."
The man, small, slight and nervous looking, lay upon a bed of boughs, covered with an old saddle blanket, his eyes bright as though with fever or fear. The skin of his face where it was seen through the black stubble of beard looked yellow with sickness. The cheek bones stood out sharply, little pools of shadow emphasizing the hollowness of his sunken cheeks. Above the waist he was stripped to his undershirt; a rude bandage under the shirt was stained the reddish brown of dried blood. A quick pity drove the distrust out of the eyes of the man who saw and who remembered.
"You poor little devil!" he said softly. He reached out his hand quickly, downright hungrily, for Jimmie's.
Clayton took the hand eagerly and held it a moment in his tense hot fingers as his eyes sought and studied Thornton's. Then he sank back with a little satisfied sigh, lying flat, his hands under his head.
"I'm sure gone to seed, huh, Buck?" he demanded.
"It's tough, Jimmie. Tell me about it."
The broken line of discolored teeth showed suddenly under the lifted lip.
"It ain't much to tell, Buck," Clayton answered slowly as the snarl left the pinched features. "But it's somethin' for a man to think about when he lays in a hole like this like a sick cat. But, Buck," and he spoke sharply, "didn't you bring no grub with you?"
"Yes, Jimmie. Wait a minute." Thornton stepped outside, not forgetting to close the door quickly after him, jerked the little package from his saddle strings where it had posed all day as his own lunch, and brought it back into the dugout. "I didn't know just what you wanted, but here's some bread and a hunk of cold meat and here's some coffee. We'll get it to boiling in a minute, and…"
"An' a drink, Buck?" eagerly. "You brung a flask, didn't you?"
"Yes, Jimmie," Thornton assured him with a quiet smile. He whipped the flask from his pocket and removing the cork held it out. "I remember that you used to say a meal without a drink wasn't any use to you."
Clayton put out a swift hand for the flask, shot it to his lips, and the gurgle of the running liquor spoke of a long draught.
"Now, the grub, Buck." He sat up, a little healthier color in his cheeks. "Let the coffee go; it'll come in handy tomorrow."
Thornton made a cigarette and leaning back against the door watched this outcast who bore the brand of the hunted on his brow, whose eyes were feverish with a hunger that was ravenous.
"Poor little old Jimmie," he muttered under his breath.
Clayton picked over the contents of the little package with hasty fingers, pushing the bread aside, eating noisily of the meat. When at last he had finished he rolled up the remainder of the lunch in the greasy paper, thrust it under the corner of his blanket, and put out his hands for the tobacco and papers.
"I ain't even had a smoke for three days, Buck. Hones' to Gawd, I ain't."
"Now, Jimmie," Thornton suggested when both men were smoking, and
Clayton again lay on his back, resting, "better tell me about it. Can't
I move you over to my cabin?"
"No, Buck. You can't. An' I'll tell you." He broke off suddenly, his eyes burning with an anxious intensity upon Thornton's. Then, with a new note in his voice, a half whimper, he blurted out, "Hones' to Gawd, I'll blow my brains out before I let 'em get me again! But you wouldn't give me away, Buck, would you? You'd remember how I stuck by you down in El Paso, won't you, Buck? You wouldn't give a damn for … for a reward if they was to offer one, would you, Buck? 'Cause you know I'd shoot myself if they got me, an' you don't forget how I stuck to you, do you, Buck?"
"No, Jimmie," came the assurance very softly. "I don't give a damn for the reward and I don't forget. Pull yourself together, Jimmie."
"Then here it is, an' I'll give you my word, s'elp me Gawd, that every little bit of it is like I'm tellin' you. I ain't stringin' you, Buck, an' I am puttin' myself in your hands, like one friend with another. That's right, ain't it?"
"That's right, Jimmie. Go ahead."
"They had me in the pen, then; you knowed that, Buck? Run me in, by Gawd, because I happened to be havin' a drink with a man named Stenton an' a man named Cosgrove an' a dirty Mex as was all crooked an' was wanted for somethin' they pulled off back down there … I don't know rightly what it was, damn if I do, Buck! But they wanted somebody, an' they got the deadwood on them jaspers, an' me bein' seen with 'em, they put me across, too. Put me across three years ago, Buck! An' it was hell, jes' hell, that's all. Hell for a man like me, Buck, as is used to sleepin outdoors an' the fresh air blowin' over the big ranges, an' horses an' things. An' … well, I stood it for three years, Buck. Three years, man! Think o' that! You don't know what it means. An' then, when I couldn't stand it no longer," and his voice dropped suddenly and the look of the hunted ran back into his eyes, "I broke jail. An' I got this."
He touched his fingers gingerly to the bandaged side, wincing even with the gesture.
"Two bullets," he muttered. "Colt forty-fives. An' I been like this nine days. Or ten, I ain't sure. An' nights, Buck. The nights … Gawd!"
Thornton, his lips tightening a little, watched the man and for a moment said nothing. And then, suddenly, his voice commanding the truth:
"Don't hold back anything, Jimmie," he said. "It'll be all over the country in a week, anyway. How'd you make your get-away? Did you have to kill anybody?"
He had his answer in the silence which for ten seconds Clayton's twitching lips hesitated to break. When spoken answer came it was broken down into a whisper.
"I … I wasn't goin' to hurt anybody, Buck. Hones' to Gawd, I wasn't. An' then, then I got hold his gun, an' I seen he was goin' to fight for it, an' I … I had to shoot! I didn't go to kill him, Buck! An' he shot me firs' with the other gun … you oughta see them holes in my side!… an'…." He stopped abruptly, and then, a little defiance sweeping up into his eyes, rushing into his voice, he ended sulkily, "The son of a —— had it comin' to him!"
For a long time Buck Thornton, sunk into a deep, thoughtful silence, said nothing. Jimmie's account of an adventure of this kind was sure to be garbled; considering it in an attempt to get to the truth at the bottom of it was an occupation comparable to that of staring down into muddy water in search of a hidden white pebble. He knew Jimmie Clayton. He knew him as perhaps Clayton did not know himself. The man had been sent to state's prison, not because of the company he kept, but because, in Jimmie's own words, "he had it comin'." He had known long ago that Jimmie Clayton would end this way, or worse. Now Clayton was giving his own version of the killing of the guard, and this version would probably be a lie. But through all of these considerations which Thornton saw so clearly there was something else; something seen as clearly, looming high and distinct above them: Jimmie had played the part of friend when but for a friend Thornton would have died. That counted with Buck Thornton. And now Clayton had sent for him, had entrusted into his hands all hope of safety. And he was not this man's judge.
While the cowboy sat silent and thoughtful Jimmie Clayton was watching him, watching him with anxiety brilliant in his eyes, his tongue moistening, constantly moistening the lips which went dry and parched and cracked. Thornton knew, without lifting his eyes from the pool of shadow quivering at the base of the candle stub.
"You ain't goin' back on me, Buck!" The wounded man had drawn himself up on his elbow. "I'll leave it to you, Buck, if I didn't stick by you when you was in trouble. Remember, Buck, when I found you, out on the trail between Juarez and El Paso. And you don't care a damn about the reward, Buck; you said so, didn't you?"
"Jimmie," said Thornton slowly, lifting his eyes from the floor to meet both the pleading and the terror in Clayton's, "I'm going to do what I can for you. But I don't quite know what is to be done. They're going to be on your trail mighty soon if they're not on it now. Can you ride?"
"I can't ride much, Buck." And yet Clayton's voice rang with its first note of hope. For if Thornton knew him, then no less did Clayton know Thornton. And Buck had said that he was going to help him. "I rode them two hundred miles getting here, me all shot to hell that away. An' I rode into your camp las' night to leave the letter. An' I guess if it had been half a mile fu'ther I wouldn't never have made it back."
"Why didn't you come in at my cabin? I'd have fixed you up there."
"I come awful near it, Buck! I wanted to. But I didn't know. There might 'a' been some of the other boys bunkin' there an' I wasn't takin' chances."
"I see. Now, let's see what we're goin' to do."
He stood whipping at his boots with his quirt, trying to see a way. This lonely place might be a safe refuge for a few days. But range business sometimes carried his men this far, and soon or late some one would stumble upon Clayton's hiding place. Clayton's voice, eager again and confident, broke into his thoughts.
"I got to find somebody as'll give me a lift, ain't I? A man can't go on playin' a lone han' like I'm adoin' an' get away with it long. Now, I got to be laid up here four or five days, anyway, until I can ride again. You can keep your punchers away from here that long, can't you?"
"Yes. I can give them plenty to do on the other end."
"That's good. An' you can ride out again, at night, you know, Buck, an' smuggle me some more grub, can't you?"
"Yes. But…."
"Wait a minute! I know a man in Hill's Corners as'll give me a han'. I done him favours before now, same as I done for you, Buck. An' he knows the ropes up here. You can git word to him, can't you? An' then I'll drift, an' he'll look out for me, an' you'll be square with what I done for you, Buck. Will you do it?"