by Max Brand
CHAPTER 29
Even in his own lifetime a man in the mountain desert passes swiftlyfrom the fact of history into the dream of legend. The telephone and thenewspaper cannot bring that lonely region into the domain of cold truth.In the time that followed people seized on the story of Andrew Lanningand embroidered it with rare trimmings. It was told over and over againin saloons and around family firesides and in the bunk houses of manyranches. For Andrew had done what many men failed to do in spite of ascore of killings--he struck the public fancy. People realized, howevervaguely, that here was a unique story of the making of a desperado, andthey gathered the story of Andrew Lanning to their hearts.
On the whole, it was not an unkindly interest. In reality the sympathywas with the outlaw. For everyone knew that Hal Dozier was on the trailagain, and everyone felt that in the end he would run down his man, andthere was a general hope that the chase might be a long one. For onething, the end of that chase would have removed one of the few vitalcurrent bits of news. Men could no longer open conversations by askingthe last tidings of Andrew. Such questions were always a signal for anunlocking of tongues around the circle.
Many untruths were told. For instance, the blowing of the safe inAllertown was falsely attributed to Andrew, while in reality he knewnothing about "soup" and its uses. And the running of the cows off theCircle O Bar range toward the border was another exploit which waswrongly checked to his credit or discredit. Also the brutal butchery inthe night at Buffalo Head was sometimes said to be Andrew's work, but ingeneral the men of the mountain desert came to know that the outlaw wasnot a red-handed murderer, but simply a man who fought for his own life.
The truths in themselves were enough to bear telling and retelling.Andrew's Thanksgiving dinner at William Foster's house, with a revolveron the table and a smile on his lips, was a pleasant tale and athrilling one as well, for Foster had been able to go to the telephoneand warn the nearest officer of the law. There was the incident of thejammed rifle at The Crossing; the tale of how a youngster at Tomodecided that he would rival the career of the great man--how he got afine bay mare and started a blossoming career of crime by sticking upthree men on the road and committing several depredations which were allattributed to Andrew, until Andrew himself ran down the foolish fellow,shot the gun out of his hand, gave him a talking that recalled hislost senses.
But all details fell into insignificance compared with the generaltheme, which was the mighty duel between Andrew and Hal Dozier--theunescapable manhunter and the trapwise outlaw. Hal did not lose anyreputation because he failed to take Andrew Lanning at once. The veryfact that he was able to keep close enough to make out the trail at allincreased his fame. He did not even lose his high standing because hewould not hunt Andrew alone. He always kept a group with him, and peoplesaid that he was wise to do it. Not because he was not a match forAndrew Lanning singlehanded, but because it was folly to risk life whenthere were odds which might be used against the desperado. But everyonefelt that eventually Lanning would draw the deputy marshal away from hisposse, and then the outlaw would turn, and there would follow a battleof the giants. The whole mountain desert waited for that time to comeand bated its breath in hope and fear of it.
But if the men of the mountain desert considered Hal Dozier the greatestenemy of Andrew, he himself had quite another point of view. It was theloneliness, as Pop had promised him. There were days when he hardlytouched food such was his distaste for the ugly messes which he had tocook with his own hands; there were days when he would have risked hislife to eat a meal served by the hands of another and cooked by anotherman. That was the secret of that Thanksgiving dinner at the Fosterhouse, though others put it down to sheer, reckless mischief. And today,as he made his fire between two stones--a smoldering, evil-smellingfire of sagebrush--the smoke kept running up his clothes and choking hislungs with its pungency. And the fat bacon which he cut turned hisstomach. At last he sat down, forgetting the bacon in the pan,forgetting the long fast and the hard ride which had preceded this meal,and stared at the fire.
Rather, the fire was the thing which he kept chiefly in the center ofhis vision, but his glances went everywhere, to all sides, up, and down.Hal Dozier had hunted him hotly down the valley of the Little SilverRiver, but near the village of Los Toros the fagged posse and Halhimself had dropped back and once more given up the chase. No doubt theywould rest for a few hours in the town, change horses, and then comeafter him again.
It was a new Andrew Lanning that sat there by the fire. He had leftMartindale a clear-faced boy; the months that followed had changed himto a man; the boyhood had been literally burned out of him. The skin ofhis face, indeed, refused to tan, but now, instead of a healthy andcrisp white it was a colorless sallow. The rounded cheeks were nowstraight and sank in sharply beneath his cheek bones, with a sharplyincised line beside the mouth. And his expression at all times was oneof quivering alertness--the mouth a little compressed and straight, thenostrils seeming a trifle distended, and the eyes as restless as theeyes of a hungry wolf.
Moreover, all of Andrew's actions had come to bear out this sameexpression of his face. If he sat down his legs were gathered, and heseemed about to stand up. If he walked he went with a nervous step,rising a little on his toes as though he were about to break into a runor as though he were poising himself to whirl at any alarm. He sat inthis manner even now, under that dead gray sky of sheeted clouds, and inthe middle of that great rolling plain, lifeless and colorless--lifelessexcept for the wind that hummed across it, pointed with cold. Andrew,looking from the dull glimmer of his fire to that dead waste, sighed. Hewhistled, and Sally came instantly to the call and dropped her headbeside his own. She, at least, had not changed in the long pursuits andthe hard life. It had made her gaunt. It had hardened and matured hermuscles, but her head was the same, and her changeable, human eyes, theeyes of a pet, had not altered.
She stood there with her head down, silently; and Andrew, his handslocked around his knees, neither spoke to her nor stirred. But bydegrees the pain and the hunger went out of his face, and, as though sheknew that she was no longer needed, Sally tipped his sombrero over hiseyes with a toss of her head, and, having given this signal of disgustat being called without a purpose, she went back to her work of croppingthe gramma grass, which of all grasses a horse loves best. Andrewstraightened his hat and cast one glance after her.
A shade of thought passed over his face as he looked at her. But thistime the posse was probably once more starting on out of Los Toros andtaking his trail. It would mean another test; he did not fear for her,but he pitied her for the hard work that was coming, and he lookedalmost with regret over the long racing lines of her body. And it wasthen, coming out of the sight of Sally, the thought of the posse, andthe disgust for the greasy bacon in the pan, that Andrew received aquite new idea. It was to stop his flight, turn about, and double like afox straight back toward Los Toros, making a detour to the left. Theposse would plunge ahead, and he could cut in toward Los Toros. For hehad determined to eat once again, at least, at a table covered with awhite cloth, food prepared by the hand of another. Sally was known; hewould leave her in the grove beside the Little Silver River. Forhimself, weeks had passed since any man had seen him, and certainly noone in Los Toros had met him face to face. He would be unknown exceptfor a general description. And to disarm suspicion entirely he wouldleave his cartridge belt and his revolver with Sally in the woods. Forwhat human being, no matter how imaginative, would possibly dream ofAndrew Lanning going unarmed into a town and sitting calmly at a tableto order a meal?