“Go back into the house! It’s a raid—it’s that damned Mike Bundy burning us down.”
She called something to him. He didn’t even hear. He heard the snarling of guns and only prayed to be in time to take a hand.
CHAPTER XIII
Dorn ran he made out that fires were blazing in several places, and he saw the vague figures of running men. Two or three sped around the corral to vanish behind the barn. They were yelling and shooting as they ran; he shouted to them but held his own fire, since it was impossible to know whether these were the raiders or some of his own men pursuing them.
Never checking his speed he saw that three of his freight wagons, cargo-full, were blazing; that the big hay-filled barn was afire; that a red glow stood up against the sky above Halfway. Then, coming into the area lighted by the burning wagons he saw a man half lying, half crouching on the ground. The man heard and saw him and called weakly yet in desperate earnestness: “Go get ’em, Bill! Give ’em hell.”
Dorn recognized the voice, knew that the man was Curly O’Connor, badly hurt, saw Curly sag and melt down into the ground, but kept on running. But he shouted back: “Take it easy, Curly. We’ll be with you right away.”
Before he saw the raiders, in full flight now, he heard beyond the barn the hammering of horses’ hoofs and shouts of challenge and defiance and a continued rattle of shots and then one long thin scream of agony—and on top of the scream a shout of victorious laughter. Already another man than Curly O’Connor had got in the way of a bullet, but as yet Dorn could not guess to which party he belonged.
Then he saw the two or three of his own men, Duke Jones and Bud Williams and a new hand or two, running out into the north pasture, firing as they ran after a small knot of rapidly vanishing riders. At first Dorn thought there were a hundred of them; then he made out that there were only a dozen riders at most. The rest were the Palm Ranch horses being stampeded. Already the fugitives were as good as out of range, yet he emptied his six shooter along with the vials of his wrath after them.
“They got Curly, damn ’em,” said Bud Williams, his empty rifle hot in his hands.
“I know,” said Dorn hurriedly. “One of you boys hurry back and see what you can do for him—”
“They’re still fightin’ over to Halfway,” said Duke Jones, and started off in the direction of the fire and uproar over there, just out of sight under the brow of the hill though flame and smoke smudged the sky above. “Who was it yelled just now, like he’d been hit?” demanded Dorn.
Duke Jones laughed. “One of them damn night-riders. Me, I knocked him out’n his saddle an’ he’s still layin’ where I set him down.”
They all ran, the four of them, to see what was happening at Halfway. Curly would have to wait; so would the man whom Duke Jones had shot. Sudden Bill Dorn led the way and kept the lead and increased it, such terrible anger burning into his vitals as he had never yet experienced in his life—not even when he had first gone to fight it out with Mike Bundy that day down in Nacional. Those explosions still rang in his ears as did the choking voice of Curly O’Connor; and now with his back to the blazing barn, its flames still lived where they had seared themselves on his eyeballs. As he raced along toward Halfway the glow in the sky became ruby-red and stood up higher and spread out wider, and he knew that before dawn Lorna’s pretty little town would be only a memory recorded in ash heaps. Again he could only pray to arrive in time; again, having filled his empty gun as he ran, he arrived only to unload it and the last dregs of his wrath upon a scattering, fleeing half dozen riders, vanishing like their fellows into the darkness of the north.
Altogether there were now about twenty men having their headquarters at Halfway, and to a man—some having leaped startled from their beds—they were standing out in the yard, black wavering shapes against the background of the small raging hell of burning buildings. The first man he made out distinctly was old Cap’n Jinks dancing up and down like a maniac, as indeed he was for the moment, following up, with curses as hot as the flying lead, the shots he had just fired from his old sawed-off shotgun.
“Anyone hurt here?” asked Dorn anxiously.
Wong, the Chinaman, began giggling.
“One man, he gettee plitty bad hurt, Missee Dorn. You come look-see. Me, I see um throw fire inside window; me ketch um heap quick.”
Then Dorn saw the weapon the cook still held in his hand, a broad cleaver which he kept always as bright as new tin; its edge right now, though it gleamed in the conflagration, gleamed dully, and drops like ink gathered and dripped from it. One of the new hands, a young fellow named Martin, saw it and shuddered and said, “Oh, my God!”
“I show you,” grinned the Chinaman.
Already men were doing all they could to fight the fire, not to put it out in the main building where it was already in full blossom, but to save if they could the smaller adjacent building. There was but little breeze blowing to fan the flames; they got buckets, found axes, used shovels to throw sand, and yet saw that what little would be left of Halfway was going to be as good as nothing.
“Let’s see the man you mowed down, Wong,” said Dorn.
At first, even when they stretched him out in the full light, no one knew him. Wong, still chuckling, told them: “You see? I fix um good! He no suck eggs in no more hens’ nests!” The man’s head had very nearly been split open by that fearful kitchen weapon so dear to Wong’s heart.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. Martin, for one, turned away and was sick. Dorn forced himself to look closer. When he stood up there was a deadly note in his voice.
“It’s like you’d lopped off one of Bundy’s hands, Wong. It’s Hank Smith. Dead as he is, it’s the same as though he’d opened his mouth and said, ‘This is Mike Bundy’s job of work.’ Well, we knew that already.”
Wong, too delighted to miss the opportunity, said: “Mebbe so Mike Bundy tell ’em not to open his head about it all—but look at um!”
“What’re we all standin’ here for like hobbled jackasses?” shrilled old Jinks. “Let this damn place burn; it will anyhow. We c’n still ride a horse, can’t we? We c’n ketch them devils up and blast ’em off the face of the earth.”
Dorn turned away, walking back toward the barn thinking of Curly O’Connor.
“Come along with me, Cap,” he said. “Curly’s bad hurt, and you can do more for a man in his shape than any of the rest of us. You boys go out after the horses; likely it will take you an hour to get a rope on the first of them but hop to it. I’m riding over to see Mike Bundy, and any of you that feel like coming along are invited.”
“We can’t save any part of the barn,” said Bud Williams, “but maybe we can pull one or two of the wagons out of the fire if we hurry.”
“Hell take the wagons,” said Dorn, curt with anger. “They’re burning like shavings soaked in oil. Bundy as usual has done a thorough job.”
“What was them big explosions?” asked the new man, Martin.
“That’s so,” muttered Duke Jones. It was to Dorn that he explained: “Our new dam’s all blown up sky-high, Bill.”
“Hell take the dam,” said Dorn. “Our job’s to get Curly to the house. Say, a couple of you boys poke out into the pasture and find out who it was that Duke shot out of the saddle. It might be—”
Cap Jinks said prayerfully, “Might even be Bundy him-se’f! An’ still alive!”
No such luck. It wasn’t Bundy, but it was a man whom all of them knew well, and when they saw who he was they stood staring with incredulous eyes. But that was only after they had carried a dying Curly O’Connor in arms as gentle as cradles to the house, only after Curly was dead and covered with that final sheet which is like a fresh fall of snow on a new grave.
Lorna and Josefa heard them coming and came out on the porch clutching each other. Both were terribly frightened, and as for Lorna, she was immoderately distressed, almost hyster
ically grieved and angered. Before she knew that anyone was hurt the tragic realization was stamped upon her that her pretty little town, the thing into which she had put all her heart and soul and which she loved as a young mother loves her first baby, lay in ruins.
Cap’n Jinks hurried ahead of the slowly moving procession and put an arm about her shoulders, hushing her.
“Sh, Lorny,” he said very gently. “Don’t take on so. They’re bringin’ Curly in. He’s been shot. Looks like he was dyin’.”
Lorna clapped her hands to her mouth; she began to shiver and crouch closer into the old man’s embrace as a new horror came into her eyes.
Curly had lost consciousness when they put him down, but before the end came he roused a little and looked about him and understood. He even tried to grin, figuring that a man ought to take whatever came as though he didn’t mind. Then the tears burst from Lorna’s eyes and streamed down her hot cheeks, and she came to his bedside and knelt and put her arms about him, trying so desperately to hold him back. He was dead, swiftly and without pain, before she knew. Of the men standing by, their hats in their hands, their faces blank and dead-looking except for their glowing eyes, it was Bill Dorn who stepped forward softly and drew her away.
Then from the pasture beyond the barn arrived three men, two of them Palm Ranch hands half supporting, half dragging the third man who was badly wounded yet who received small consideration from his captors. For he was that one of the fleeing raiders whom Duke Jones had so joyfully shot out of the saddle.
Every man in the room, Duke Jones included, looked at him in slack jawed wonder. It was one of Diana Villaga’s brothers, young Juan.
There was blood on his dead-white face, but that was nothing. There was blood on his white shirt, making it sopping wet, and there could be no doubting that Duke Jones’ bullet had come close to being the death of him. His hat was lost, hair and brow were grimy and damp.
The men holding him let him slump down into a chair. He sat with his spurred boots shoved out in front of him, his arms dangling at his sides, his chin on his breast.
“Juan!” exclaimed Dorn, to whom the boy’s presence here in such a role was like a fist in the face. “You? One of the Villagas burning us out?”
Juan Villaga didn’t answer, didn’t so much as stir. Old Jinks stooped to peer into the white, blood-and-dirt-smeared face.
“The kid’s been shot up pretty bad an’ he’s fell off’n his horse on his head,” he said, straightening up. “Maybe he’s faintin’ an’ maybe he’s dyin’, an’ anyhow who’s got a slug o’ whisky to pour down him?”
Half a dozen willing hands reached toward their owners’ hip pockets. But Juan Villaga wanted none of their ministrations. At last he raised his head and glared sullenly into the faces turned upon him, his dark smoldering eyes coming to rest at last on Bill Dorn’s.
“It’s worth getting shot, just to see everything you’ve got burned to the ground,” he said distinctly enough, though it took will power to force the words out, so weak was he with so much blood drained out of him. Duke Jones’ bullet had broken his right shoulder, had torn its bloody way out through the right side of his chest.
Lorna began to sway where she stood. Martin, the new hand, who could sympathize with her vertigo, caught her as she was falling and let her down on the bench against the wall. No one else even noticed the two of them.
Bill Dorn’s face grew harder, sterner at every word the boy spoke.
“What made you decide to chip in with Mike Bundy against our crowd?” he asked in a level, utterly expressionless voice.
Already Juan’s chin was lowering toward his chest, but again it came up, with an effort and slowly.
“Who told you Bundy was in on this?”
Dorn laughed at him. “If we needed any telling, Hank Smith told us!”
“Hank Smith? He told?”
“He’s out there, dead,” said Dorn. “And he wouldn’t be out there and he wouldn’t be dead unless he were Bundy’s man.”
Involuntarily Juan started to shrug, but a shrug now was impossible for him and he winced with pain.
“What do I care about Hank Smith? He was a dog anyhow.”
“Yet you rode with him! Never mind that. Tell me, what have you got against me? I thought we were friends! And the rest of the Villagas—”
“All the Villagas hate you!” the young fellow burst out passionately. “They have hated you since you led them all to ruin. And do you think they would not like to see Bundy or any other man ruin you in your turn? Fool!”
“Then they knew about tonight? Your father knew? Your brother Ramon was perhaps with you? Your sister Diana knew?”
“They did not know,” muttered Juan, more sullen than ever. “I am the only one of the Villagas who meant to do something. And they will never know I came here tonight until you run and tell them.”
Dorn turned away feeling somehow sick at heart.
“I’ll never tell them, Juan,” he said wearily. “It’s nothing to me. If you pull through alive you can go home and tell them what lies you like.” But perplexed he swung about to demand sharply: “Still I don’t get any sense out of this! If you say I helped ruin your father, how about Mike Bundy? Why should you chip in on his side of the row?”
Juan Villaga, head down again, didn’t even make the effort to lift his eyes.
“Don Michael is my friend,” he said sullenly. “And now do you want to keep me here? Or shall I go?”
“The nerve of him!” exploded from an irate Bud Williams. “Here’s our place torn all to hell’s smithereens, here’s our freight wagons and thousands of freight gone up in smoke, here’s our dam wrecked and—and—” He choked over it, holding it to the last, because he and Curly O’Connor had been close together like Siamese twins for years, and it was hard so early to speak Curly’s name; but he shot it out clearly enough: “Here’s Curly dead. And this greaser Villaga wants to go home! By God, he’ll go home on the end of a rope!”
Dorn didn’t have much to say. Of a sudden he felt numb inside and out. If Bud, Curly’s best friend, wanted Juan Villaga hanged as high as the moon, why not?
Juan Villaga stood up, though shakily.
“You call me greaser?” he said through bared teeth. It was the final insult to one of his fine strain of blood. He overlooked the threat of hanging.
“Oh, hell, let him go,” said old Jinks. “He’s only a kid anyhow; likewise he’s mos’ likely to bleed to death before he gets anywhere. Besides you can’t blame him, for a Villaga ain’t got any more sense than a little gray seed tick. On top of all which, it ain’t much fun killin’ a man as sick as he is, an’ it’s never much fun killin’ a skunk. C’mon, boys. We got us some ridin’ to do, like Will says. The other fellers must of rounded up the horses by now.”
Juan Villaga took his chance and walked out of the room with none to stay him. He lurched at the door and came up with a grunt of pain against the jamb. Jinks hurried forward to steady him.
“You pesky little bantam rooster,” he growled deep down in his thin brown throat, “can’t you see you’re bleedin’ to death? And besides, where’n hell’s your horse? Here, wait a shake.” He turned and called to Josefa who, chalky white, was talking voicelessly to herself in a corner. “Bring some rags to tie this kid up, likewise some whisky. He’s only a pup anyhow that thinks he’s a grown he-dog.”
“Damn you!” cried the boy. “Let me go!”
They let him go; they even got him a horse—that was after the stampeded stock was at last hazed back into the corrals—and some man helped him up into the saddle. Bud Williams had nothing further to say.
Then the Palm Ranch hands, pretty nearly to the last man, prepared to ride. Several rode bareback that night, because so many saddles had gone up in the gush of fire. Even Wong, though he hated and feared all horseflesh, elected to join the party; he carried a rifle slun
g over his shoulders by its strap, but he carried his dependable cleaver too.
Lorna came running after Bill Dorn. She had come close to fainting dead away when they brought Juan Villaga in, but now was tinglingly alive from head to foot; Dorn saw the bright sparkle of her eyes even in the starlight. She began speaking passionately, swept back into the bitter and rebellious mood that had gripped her before Villaga’s coming, before Curly’s death.
“I told you once not to kill Mike Bundy!”
“Take it easy, Lorna,” said Dorn curtly yet not altogether without sympathetic understanding. “You go back to the house. This is our part of the day’s work.”
“He has ruined in a night all we have worked for so long! Oh, Bill! He has buildings to burn; burn them! He has wagons to destroy, and freight; burn and burn and burn them! He has blood to spill—like poor Curly—”
“Lorna—”
“Oh, Bill! My little town that was so beautiful, that was going to mean so much to so many people—” He put his hand like a big friendly paw on her shoulder, heard her burst into violent weeping, then broke into a run to join the men who had gone on ahead.
CHAPTER XIV
“Exac’ly what you got in mind, Will?” asked Jinks. “Them polecats that burned us out has got anyhow an hour head start on us. Mos’ likely, too, they’ve scattered as many ways as there’s men among ’em.”
“We’re going straight to County Line,” said Dorn as he went up to his horse’s bare back. Since there were not saddles for all, he was not going to take it any easier than the men he asked to follow him. “We’ll find Bundy there, whether he rode with his pack or held back to build himself an alibi.”
“An’ when you find Bundy?” Jinks demanded.
Bill Dorn only snorted, snuggled his rifle up under his left arm and they were off and away, fourteen men of them headed for the Blue Smokes on as grim an errand as any man of them had ever committed himself to. They rode with anger and hot impatience in their hearts, yet they guarded against undue haste at the jump, looking ahead to the considerable distance to be covered.
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