CHAPTER XLI
THE FLIGHT OF THE SWALLOWS
Divide lands north of Sleepy Cat lie high and over their broad spread,trails open fan-like, north, northeast and northwest. Each of thetrails penetrates at a negotiable point the broken country running upto the mountains that battle with the northern sky.
The first highways of the country followed the easiest travel lines.Without fences or boundaries, their travelers, to escape washouts ordust, were free to broaden them as they fancied. In this way olderruts were gradually abandoned and new ones formed. And with heavytravel these trails grew into sprawling avenues.
As settlers took up lands and fenced their claims, such pioneer roadswere blocked at intervals. To meet this difficulty new trails weremade around the gradually increasing obstacles and in the end roadsalong section lines were laid out, with grading and bridging. But thewagon and cattle trails of the early days, rut-cut, storm-washed, andpolished by sun and wind and sand to a shining smoothness, stillstretch across country, truncate and deserted. Under theirweather-beaten silence lies the story of other days and other men andwomen.
Along one of the earliest and broadest of these trails running into thenorth country, Laramie, an hour after Bradley's arrival, was gallopingwith Kate Doubleday.
But for the shadow of her father's condition there was everything inthe ride to make for Kate's happiness. The sweep of the matchless sky,the glory of the sunshine, the wine of the morning air, the eager feetand spreading nostrils of the horses, and at her side--her lover! Thetrust a woman gives to a man, the security of his protection, the dailygrowth of her confidence in her choice and her surrender--these couldtemper, if they could not extinguish, her confused grief.
For Laramie the shadow meant less; sympathy drew him closer to Kate;there was even happiness in knowing that she turned in her distress tohim for consolation and guidance.
Timidly, she tried to tell him, as they rode, of some of the bettertraits of her father, traits that might extenuate his cold, hardbrutality--as if to build him up a little in the eyes of one she wishednot to think of him too harshly.
"Don't worry over what I'm going to think about him," said Laramie."If I worried over what a lot of people think about me, where should Ibe? There's some good in most every man; but it doesn't always get achance to work."
Kate's anxiety was reflected in her manner. "If only," she exclaimed,"they haven't killed him today."
The two had crossed the first divide. Below them lay the Crazy Woman,spanned by the Double-draw bridge.
"His friends were his worst enemies," continued Laramie. "But they'vegot to get out of this country now. And the worst men are out of theFalling Wall. Still if you don't like it there, we won't live there,"he added, sitting half sidewise toward Kate in his saddle to feast hiseyes on her freshness and youth.
"I shall like it anywhere you are, Jim," she said, looking at himsimply.
The picture was too much for his restraint. He reined eagerly towardher.
With a laugh she shied away, struck her horse and dashed ahead.Laramie spurred after her. But they were on the level creek bottom andriding swiftly. She gave him a long run--more than he had looked for.
He realized, as they raced toward the bridge, that he had for onemoment forgotten everything but his complete happiness. He called toKate to stop. In her zest she spurred the harder. He knew she mustnot reach the bridge ahead of him. Yet he realized the difficulty hefaced; she would not understand; and at every cost he must stop her.Animated by this sudden instinct of danger he crowded his horse, forgedabreast the flying girl, caught her bridle, and to her astonishmentdragged her horse and his own rudely to their haunches. They werealmost at the bridge itself.
"Back up!" he exclaimed. "Back up!"
"Jim!" she cried, "_please_ don't throw me!"
"Don't speak--back!!" he said low and sharply. Something in the toneand manner of the command admitted of no parley.
With her horse cavorting, half strangled, as he was jerked and backed,Kate, looking amazed at Laramie, saw in his face a man new to her--aman she never had seen before. Not her questioning look, nor thefrantic struggles of the rearing horses touched him; nothing in theconfusion of the sudden moment drew his eye for an instant from thebridge before him and his drawn revolver was already poised in hishand. Kate knew her part without another protest. She tore herhorse's mouth cruelly with the curb. Where the danger was, or what,she did not know, but she could obey orders. Her eyes tried to followLaramie's, bent ahead. The bottoms spread level in every direction.The approach to the little bridge and beyond was as open as the day.Not a living creature was anywhere in sight, nothing with life hadanywhere stirred, nothing of sound broke the silence of the morning,except--when Laramie allowed them to stop--the startled breathing ofthe horses.
"Jim!" exclaimed Kate in awed restraint. "What is it?"
His eyes were riveted straight ahead, but he answered in a mostmatter-of-fact tone: "There's somebody under that bridge."
She strained her eyes to see something he must have seen that she couldnot see. The dazzling sunshine, the dusty road, the rough-built, shortwooden bridge before them, were all plain enough. And Kate realizedfor the first time that Laramie, who had been riding on her right wasnow on her left and presently that his revolver was sheathed and hisrifle, which had hung in its scabbard at the horse's shoulder, wasslung across the hollow of his right arm.
"Kate," he said, speaking without looking at her, "will you ride backabout a mile and wait for me?"
She turned to him: "What are you going to do, Jim?"
"Smoke that fellow out."
She spoke almost in a whisper: "Is it Van Horn, Jim?"
"I don't believe he'd hide there. It's more like Stone."
"Jim! Stone's a deadly shot!"
Looking into the distance he only replied: "From cover. This may be along-winded affair, Kate." He added, pausing, "you'd better ride asfar as the hills."
She looked at him bravely restrained but with all her love in her eyes:"I don't want to leave you, Jim."
"It's poor business for you to be in," he returned firmly. "There's noway to make it pleasant."
"Don't drive me away!"
He hesitated again: "You might do this: Ride back fast about eightyrods. Leave the road there, bear to the west and circle around thelittle knoll you'll see. There's a clump of willows below the westside of that knoll."
"Do you know every clump of willows in this country, Jim?"
He answered unmoved: "I know that one for I've crawled up there morethan once to take observations under that bridge myself. Get aroundbehind those willows and you can see the creek bottom all the way tothe bridge. I'm going up the creek about five hundred yards. I'llwork down. Whoever's under the bridge can't get away except down thecreek. If you see a man trying that, just fire two shots--in the air,close together--I'll understand. If you get into any kind oftrouble--which you're kind of trying to do--fire two shots a fewseconds apart. I won't be far off."
With a plea to him to be careful--behind which all her agony ofapprehension was repressed and mastered--Kate wheeled her horse andgalloped back.
Laramie, skirting a depression, rode into a break leading to the creekbed. The creek was practically dry; just a thread of water here andthere among the rocks marked the course of flood time. Dismounting,Laramie shook himself out of the saddle and laying his rifle across hisarm, walked carefully down-stream along the bed of the creek.
He knew if he were seen first, the fight would be over before he gotinto it; of chances to kill from cover, the criminal he felt sure hewas hunting, would need but one. No man from the Falling Wall countrywas Stone's superior in the craft of hiding; but none was Laramie'sequal in the art of surprise; and Laramie meant, for once, to make anantagonist formidable from cover, show in the open.
With this alone in purpose, he stalked with the patience of an Indianfrom point to point and cover to cover down toward the bridge;
crouching, halting and peering; slipping from the shoulder of a rock tothe shelter of a boulder; flattening on his stomach to worm his wayunder a projecting ledge and sliding noiselessly on his back down theface of a water-worn glacis--but drawing closer all the time to thebridge.
He knew every inch of the ground. He knew how well his quarry hadconcealed himself to render surprise impossible. But Stone's verysafety in this respect made his retreat more difficult. A man lying inwait under the Double-draw, staked practically everything on onechance: that the man he sought to kill should cross the bridge. Itwere then easy to pick him off from behind. But if the intendedvictim, suspicious, should get unseen into the creek bed, the skulkercould hardly avoid a fight.
Three hundred yards above the bridge, the creek walls open in anellipse, narrowing abruptly where the bridge spans them. This openspace has been scoured by floods until the bedrock lies like a polishedfloor and it was now dry except where the piers of the bridge stood instagnant pools. Once within this amphitheater whose vertical wallsrise twenty to thirty feet, no fighting cover is available.
Behind a rocky point that guarded the upper entrance of the opening,stood Laramie. He was watching the shadow cast by a shrub that sprang,shallow-rooted, from a crevice in the bedrock. For an interminabletime he waited, only noting the slow swing of the narrow shadow as themorning sun, flooding the rock-basin, rose in majestic course.Gradually the deflection of the slender indicator, moving like a fingeron the rock dial, marked the turn of the sun well past the shoulder ofthe point at which Laramie must emerge. When that moment came helooked sharply out, sprang from behind the point and ran sidewise intothe narrow shadow thrown from the curving wall.
Stone, uneasy and alert, stood under the bridge, his rifle across hisarm. The two men saw each other almost at the same instant. ForStone, it was the climax of a hatred long nursed because of a supremacylong challenged. And for him it was an open field with weapons inwhich his skill was as matchless as Laramie's was held to be, at closequarters, with a Colt's revolver.
Nor had Laramie underestimated the chances of an encounter under suchcircumstances. He counted only on the slight advantage of asurprise--knowing from disagreeable experiences how a surprise jars thepoise; and there persisted in his mind, what he had never until thenhinted to another, that Stone, shooting as an assassin from cover andStone himself facing death, might shoot differently. On these slenderhopes he covered Stone, as the ex-rustler jumped his rifle to hischeck, and cried to him to pitch up.
Stone's answer was a bullet. His shot echoed Laramie's, and as Laramiewhipped the hat from his enemy's head, his bullet tore through theright side of Laramie's belt. Bare-headed, and thirsty to close on hisantagonist, Stone, jumping from Laramie's second bullet, ran forward,hugging the creek wall, dropped on one knee, fired, and ran in again.Laramie refused to be tempted from the shadow in which he stood, untilStone, rounding the wall again as he came on, firing, threatened tofind partial cover should Laramie stand still. It was a contest ofdeadly fencing, of steady heads and cool wit, a struggle in instantstrategy. And if Stone meant to force Laramie into the sunshine, henow succeeded--but at a fearful cost. Laramie jumped not only into thesunshine but into the blinding sun itself, and when Stone ran in again,Laramie tore open his hip with a bullet. It knocked the foreman overas if it had been a mallet. But he was swiftly up and firingpersistently almost outlined with bullets Laramie's figure against therock wall. He splintered the grip of Laramie's revolver in itsholster, he cut the sleeve from his wrist, and tore hair from the rightside of his head; but he could not stop him. Enraged, and realizingtoo late how every possibility in the fight had been figured out by hisenemy before he stepped into sight, Stone, crippled, yet forced tocircle, dropped once more on his knee to smash in a final shot.
He was covered the instant he knelt. A bullet from Laramie's rifleshook him like a leaf. His head, jerking, sunk to his breast. With asuperhuman effort he rallied. He looked at Laramie--narrowlywatching--shook the hair from before his eyes and fumbling at thefiring lever tried to elevate his rifle to pump. But he swayed on hisbent knee; the rifle slipped from his grasp. He sank to the rockfloor, clutching with his big hands at the gravel, while Laramierunning to him turned him over, snatched his revolver from its holsterand throwing it out of reach, lifted his enemy's head.
When Kate, in an agony of suspense, made her way to the creek bed shefound Laramie scooping water up in his hands for Stone. She could notgo near the wounded man. Only by word from where she stood, piteously,and by dumb sign, she drew Laramie to her to learn whether _he_ washurt. When he declared he was not, she would not believe him till shehad felt his arm where one bullet had cut his sleeve, and where thedeadliest had raised a sullen red welt along his temple.
Ben Simeral was first to come along on his way to town, in his wagon.John Frying Pan was with him. With their help, Laramie got Stone up tothe bridge and into the wagon to take to town. He had shut his eyesand refused to talk. Kate made Laramie tell her every detail of thefight and breathed anew the terrors of each moment.
"I stole toward the bridge the minute I heard the firing," sheconfessed, unsteadily. "Oh, yes, I know! I might have been killed.But if you were, I wanted to be. How could you tell, when you stoppedme so, Jim, there was a man under the bridge?"
"A bunch of bank swallows nests under that bridge right where Stone washiding," he said, reflecting. "Those swallows always fly out when Iride up to it. If they don't fly out, I don't cross. Today theydidn't fly out."
Laramie Holds the Range Page 41