by Max Brand
His last doubt was presently removed from his mind, for, coming to a stretch of road where the prints of horses’ hoofs were few, and these only the tracks that followed squarely between the wheel ruts, the sheriff discovered new signs that made him dismount from his horse to examine them more closely. What he found was the print that a horse makes when it runs at full speed—the feet falling in four distinct beats at about an equal distance from each other, and then a long gap where the last hoof leaves the ground and the body of the animal is thrown forward through the air. The sheriff watched these tracks with painful attention, and then, to settle any remaining doubts, he got into the saddle on the pinto and spurred him into a hundred-yard sprint. At the end of it, he reined in the mustang and dismounted again. There were now two parallel tracks of a running horse, but the differences between them were great. The first comer out-strode the pinto by an astonishing distance, and, in spite of the fact that the wind had drifted a good deal of sand into the marks, the indentations of the other horse were much the deeper. It was the track, indeed, not of a cattle pony but of a heavy horse that had enough blood to get into a racing stride; it was the track of a long-legged animal, and the mind of the sheriff reverted at once to the picture of Prince Harry and his long neck, a sign of speed.
Before he remounted, Sturgis looked carefully to his revolver; he even tried its balance, and, after that unnecessary precaution, he climbed into the saddle again and sent the pinto down the trail once more, at the long, lazy lope that held on through the morning, rocking uphill and down dale until they came to the forking of the road. There was no problem here. As though to help his pursuers, the rider of the long-stepping horse had taken the curve short—his prints lay on the side of the road, far from all others, and the sheriff, without letting the pinto fall even into a trot, swung down the left-hand way toward the hills.
Two miles farther on the sign disappeared on the road, and the sheriff cut in a small circle that brought him to a group of bushes, and in the middle of this a spot of bare sand. There was not a single indentation on this sand, but the sheriff appeared to be greatly interested in it. He looked on all sides, and saw no other sign of shrubbery, then he dismounted, and, searching among the brush, he came upon a dry stalk broken across close to the surface of the ground. The wood was so rotten that it was impossible to tell whether or not it had recently been broken, so the sheriff turned and looked fixedly at the center of the sand plot. It showed no sign; there was not the faintest indication of a mound, and sufficient wind had touched the surface to cover it with the tiny wind marks, in long, wavy lines. But apparently the sheriff had reduced his problem to a point where the clue must lie in the sand of this little opening. He stepped directly to the center, dug his toe into the ground, and turned up a quantity of charred sticks.
IV
He sent the pinto back to the road, and now he broke from the lope into a gallop, still almost effortless, but nearly twice as rapid as his former gait. Once, he glanced back, but the sun was comfortably high—it was not far past noon. A full two hundred yards, or more, he had gone before he found the place where the pursued man had cut back onto the road again, and now the sheriff watched the tracks with a new interest. He found, as he had expected, that the gait was no longer a full gallop, but only a hand canter, and Sturgis knew perfectly well that the long back and the fragile legs of such a horse could not stand the gait that was so natural to a cow pony. The rider must have realized this, for presently the marks of the canter went out, and in its place was the sign of a trot. At this gait the animal went along much better. There was an ample distance from print to print and the uniform size of the gap showed that he still had plenty of strength left. Or perhaps his strength was already far gone and the horse was traveling on nerve alone.
However that might be, the sheriff soon ceased to look at the tracks. Instead, he kept his gaze fastened far down the road, and, wherever it rolled out of sight among the hills, he sat straighter in the saddle and his search became more piercing. There were many places where a wary man could take shelter and watch a great stretch of the road behind him. And if it were anyone of this neighborhood, he would be sure to know the sheriff by his celebrated pinto. In that case a wise man would take no further chances, but pull his rifle and wait for a shot.
So the sheriff, as he went deeper into the hills, spurred the pinto to a faster gait. He looked back, now and again, to the road, and saw in two places a milling of many tracks where the pursued had dismounted to breathe his horse. Now he came swinging over the shoulder of a hill with a stretch of a full three miles running straight ahead of him. It was quite empty—not a sign of any living thing in all its distance—but the sheriff swung the pony around with a jerk and headed back behind the hill.
He had planned to catch sight of the fugitive within the next half hour of riding unless the sign he had read had lied to him. This gap of empty road startled him, for it told him either that he had not read the tracks correctly or that the other had left the road. If he had left the road, there could only be two reasons for it. One was that he had decided on a long rest for himself and his mount, which was quite unreasonable at this period of the day. The other was that he had seen the sheriff following, and had recognized the bright coloring of the pinto. The latter reason was by far the best, and the sheriff acted upon it.
Leaving his pinto ensconced in a clump of trees on the far side of the hill, he skirted around the other edge. The road was a slightly graded cut on the side of a long, sharp slope, forested thickly. The chances were great that the rider of the horse, if indeed he were a fugitive from justice and if his mount were the chestnut of Jan van Zandt, would go either for rest or to spy on the pursuit among the trees above the road, where he could see everything and remain himself unseen. It was on this side of the road, then, that Sturgis prepared to hunt, but he paused before beginning, partly because of the danger that lay ahead of him, but far more because above all things in this world he hated to go on foot. It was while he stood among the brush at the roadside, summoning his resolution and letting his bright little eyes rove everywhere among the trees ahead of him, that the sheriff saw a man step out of the forest and go swinging down the road not fifty yards ahead of him. He was so set for the work ahead of him, however, that he had almost dismissed the stranger from his mind and started toward the trees when something in the gait of the man made him pause. It was a hobbling gait, short steps that were uneven, and the sheriff recognized through sympathy the pace of a man who generally moves on horseback alone. More than this, he saw those strides gradually lengthen, as the walker swung into his work, and it convinced the sharp eyes of the sheriff that this was no random hunter, strolling over the mountains, but a man who had recently climbed from the back of a horse, whose leg muscles were not yet all straightened out. Not until he had noted all these facts did the sheriff catch the gleam of spurs, but he had already made up his mind. When he left his horse, he had taken his rifle with him. Now he deliberately dropped upon one knee behind a shrub and sighted among the branches. With the stock squeezed into his shoulder and his finger curling on the trigger he shouted: “Halt!”
It brought an amazing result. Instead of turning with both hands held high over his head, as is the time-honored custom on such occasions, the stranger leaped to one side, at the same time pitching toward the ground and whirling about on his face, so that he struck with only his left elbow supporting his shoulders, and in that hairbreadth of time he had conjured a .45 Colt out of its holster. He lay with the muzzle of the revolver tipped up and down balancing for a snap shot in any direction.
“Not so bad!” called the sheriff.
The man with the revolver twisted to one side, and the revolver became rigid, for the echo from the hillside had made Sturgis’s voice seem to come from the opposite direction.
“Drop it,” continued the sheriff. “I’ve got a line on you, bud. I’ve got your head in the circle, pal.”
The other hesitated for a single
instant, and then scrambled to his feet, tossing the revolver into the dust. “Well,” he said coolly enough, “what does all this mean?”
“It means that I want the other gun,” said the sheriff.
“What gun?”
“Don’t play me for a fool,” Sturgis retorted. “First, turn your face the other way.” He was obeyed. “Now shell out your other cannon.”
The other produced a second weapon from somewhere in his clothes, and tossed it away.
“All right,” said the sheriff, stepping from behind the bush, “you can face this way, friend, after you’ve got those hands up high.”
The hands went up slowly, and with equal slowness the other turned. Sturgis, with intense interest, saw that the fellow had to fight, apparently, before he could force his hands above the level of his shoulders and up into the region of helplessness.
“If you want my money,” said the stranger without undue nervousness, “you’ll find my wallet in the left hip pocket.”
“Thanks,” said Sturgis. “Don’t mind if I do. Get up them hands.”
The arms of the other had, in fact, lowered a little as the sheriff came closer, but now he straightened them again and looked thoughtfully at Sturgis. He was in all respects a man of superior appearance, with a carefully tended mustache, kept clean of the lips, and a pale, rather handsome face with those square cheeks, somewhat puffy at the jowls, that betoken good living. Above all, he had that straight and penetrating glance that comes to men who have directed many others. He kept his hands high up while the fingers of the sheriff ran swiftly over him. He did not even quiver when Sturgis extracted a third weapon—it was a little, double-barreled pistol that hung under the man’s shirt suspended from a noose of horsehair.
Sturgis knew now why the man was so averse to getting his hands above his shoulders, for, even if his thumb was as high as his throat, he had still a chance to hook it under the little horsehair lariat and whip out the pistol for the two final shots. “My, my,” commented the sheriff as he cut the string and pocketed the little weapon. “Kind of a walkin’ arsenal, ain’t you?”
“In this country, apparently,” the other replied, “a man needs to be.”
“Oh, we ain’t so bad around here,” said the sheriff. “For instance, we don’t lift horses regular.” There was not a flicker of the other’s eyes. “Suppose you lead me where the chestnut is,” he said. “All right now. You can take your hands down.”
“Thanks,” said the man of the well-trimmed moustache, and he brushed it with his fingertips, studying the sheriff. “For a hold-up man,” he said, “you talk in a singular fashion. What chestnut do you refer to?”
The smile of the sheriff widened to a broad grin. “I’m forty-five years old, partner,” he said. “If I was two years younger, I think you’d get by, but today you’re out of luck. The seat of your trousers is all shiny, the way cloth gets when it rubs on leather, say. And they’s a sort of horse smell about you. I say, lead me to that horse, and don’t be aggravatin’.”
The other shrugged his shoulders and gave up. “It’s not worth seeing,” he said.
“Dead?”
“It was a show horse,” said the stranger. His jaw thrust out and his face changed. “The first time in my life that I’ve gone so wrong in judging a horse.”
“No stamina, eh?” murmured the sheriff sympathetically. “No guts at all. Well, I ain’t surprised that you went wrong on him. When them horses first come into the country, they took my eye, too . . . then I seen what a day’s work does to ’em and I changed my mind. But I didn’t hear no shot . . . how’d you kill the horse?”
“I couldn’t risk a bullet,” said the other. “Sound travels too far in this country.”
“And instead?”
“A knife turned the trick nicely . . . through the temple, you know.”
The sheriff opened both his mouth and his eyes. “You run a knife into that horseflesh?” he muttered, recovering himself. “Well, it’s time we started back . . . sorry you got to walk.”
“Not at all,” replied the other, apparently unmoved by the hardening of the sheriff’s voice. “I’m not going to walk, and I’m not going back.”
V
It made the sheriff look again at his prisoner. “Tut, tut,” he said good-naturedly, “you s’prise me, partner. What d’you figure on doin’?”
“Sitting down on that rock and talking to you.”
“It’ll get us back after dark to the town,” said the sheriff, “but outside of that it’s a hog-ear to me whether you walk back now or after we’ve talked.”
They made themselves comfortable on the rock, each twisting around so that his face was to the other. “Now, what d’you want to do?” said the sheriff.
“I want your horse.”
“Yes?”
“And I want you to take back to Sloan the price of the horse I’ve just ridden to death, along with the price of your own horse.”
“Oh,” murmured the sheriff mildly, “maybe you’ll give me a check?”
The stranger did not smile. “Here’s my wallet,” he said.
“You count it for me,” suggested Sturgis.
So the thief unfolded the leather, and, extracting a thick sheaf of greenbacks, he counted over silently and slowly into the sheriff’s hand five bills of $1,000 each and thirty more of the $100 denomination. “One thousand dollars for the horse,” said the stranger, “one hundred for your horse, and six thousand nine hundred dollars to pay for your long walk back to Sloan.” He raised his eyes from the count, retaining a few bills in his hand.
The sheriff laid the money back on his knee with a sigh. “Sorry,” he said.
“Naturally you’re sorry that I should underestimate your dislike for walking,” said the stranger calmly. “Accordingly I hasten to correct the mistake,” and he added to the little pack four more bills of $1,000 each. “Ten thousand nine hundred is the price of that walk back to Sloan. And now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll take your horse and hurry along.”
The sheriff sat with his shoulders bowed. He looked like a man over whom old age has suddenly swept, unstringing all his nerves, and he squinted up at the stranger with eyes of pain. “Sit down again,” said the sheriff huskily. “I hate to say it, but you’ve no idea how I hate walkin’.”
The other sighed, then he sat down and leaned a little closer. “I want you to take note of these things,” he said, and checked them off on the tips of his fingers. “Did you ever hear of a horse thief with close to eleven thousand dollars in his wallet? Does it seem possible to you that a man might be making a journey in such desperate speed that he would change saddles from one horse to another without stopping to haggle with the owner of the second horse about a price? Finally do you think it absurd and beyond reason that a man making such a desperate journey would, when it is completed, send back the price of the horse he had taken?”
“I’ll tell you what,” said the sheriff. “Them three questions are ones that twelve men could answer better than one.”
For the first time the stranger flushed. He sat back, gritting his teeth, and looked the sheriff between the eyes. “I have a checkbook with me,” he said at length. “Name the price of that walk back to Sloan. It’ll be yours.”
“H-m-m,” murmured the sheriff. “I’d a sort of an idea that it would come down to a matter of writing a check.”
“Because,” said the other earnestly, “you know that my check for almost any amount would be good.” He clenched one hand into a fist while he talked, and the sheriff, looking down, wondered at the smallness of the hand, and the whiteness of the skin. “Besides,” went on the stranger, “in your heart you’re absolutely convinced that what I’ve told you is the truth. You know that I’m here on business only. You know from my appearance that I’m not a horse rustler. You know that I’m talking to you as straight as my money talks.”
“Straighter, in fact,” said the sheriff.
The stranger flushed again. “If you’re offen
ded because I’ve attempted to bribe you,” he said, “I’m sorry. But I’ve most urgent need to get across those hills. I couldn’t stop to be scrupulous.”
“D’you ever notice,” said the sheriff absently, “that when a gent starts elbowin’ in a crowd most generally he starts a fight that everybody gets hurt in?”
The stranger caught his breath with impatience but said nothing.
“It’s that way about the chestnut horse,” went on the sheriff. “He ain’t worth more’n a thousand dollars, that horse that you turned into so much meat . . . with your knife. No, he ain’t hardly worth more’n a thousand, but maybe he means more’n money to the gent that raised him from the time he was a foal. You see? Look at it another way. You grab this horse and ride on, expectin’ to pay for him later. Well, the gent that owns this horse finds him gone, and right off he says that a gent nearby is the one that done the stealin’. He’s sure of that, because he knows this young gent hates him. Well, he starts out and rounds up a pile of ornery boys like himself and come boilin’ down to my office bent on revenge. They go one way . . . I go the other. I have all the luck, it turns out, and suppose that gang of farmers misses the horse, which they will, and comes back thinkin’ a lot of hard things about the young gent that they first thought done the stealin’. Well, people take it kind of hard around here when a horse stolen, and, when they got a suspicion, they don’t always wait for a jury. They go straight to Judge Lynch and get an opinion. You foller me, maybe?”