“But they ain’t … not all,” was the slow denial. “They ain’t got the dangerous Jore. He’s still free.”
“Zion, you mean? The young fellow they say is crazy?”
Old Dad nodded gravely. But his guest failed to extract any thrill out of that. “He won’t be free long … with a sheriff like you got. From what I read, Pat Dolan must be pretty much of a man.”
He was surprised to see that didn’t set well.
“Yeah?” said Dad, in his slowest drawl.
“Meanin’ that you really don’t think so?”
“Waal,” Dad’s drawl speeded up, “you didn’t say pretty much of what kind of a man you thought he was. I think he’s pretty much of a bluff myself. I think”—his wrinkled old countenance flushing with righteous wrath—“he’s the most graspin’, self-aspirin’, fame-famished yahoo which it’s ever been my misfortune to know.”
“W-whew!” That was going some for a hot day.
“And contrary to what the papers said”—Dad’s ire boiled over—“it ain’t no laurels on Dolan’s blockhead that he got the Jores. He couldn’t help hisself. Yance and Abel walked right into a trap he’d set for Zion. Somebody give him a tip where the young fellow was stayin’. The Jores must have got the same tip. It was a bad break for them. But fool’s luck for Dolan! And he’s playin’ it up for all it’s worth. Takin’ credit on false pretenses. Why, he ain’t made a move of his own since he’s been sheriff. Done nothin’ … till he got the help of that blackhearted scalawag. Read about Shang Haman?”
The stranger had. “Waal,” grimly predicted old Dad, “you’re apt to read more, if you watch right close. A pithy little notice … all about how he was born, such and such a time, and died any day about now, with his boots on. Plenty of folks right in this town what’s rarin’ to give him a send-off.”
“Doubtless! A squealer was never popular. But Luke Chartres,” asked the visitor, “just what’s his interest in this? From what I catch, he’d as much to do with this clean-up of Jores as the sheriff. Seems to me it’s a strange business for a man of his prominence to tangle with.”
“Chartres,” said Dad Peppin shortly, “wants his pound of horseflesh.”
Which was a phase of the case the stranger had missed. A dozen questions rose to his lips. But before he could voice one, old Dad boiled over again.
“Pat Dolan,” he said, “has greased the skids for more bloodshed than this country’s seen yet. Nobody on earth could have got Zion back in that basin and looked after him but his uncles. It’s all they asked for in life … just to get their brother’s son home before he caused grief. But Dolan blocked their move. Nobody else has any influence …” He started suddenly. “Unless,” he said thoughtfully, “it’s that young fellow he calls pard.”
“The sick tenderfoot crook who kept the posse out of the Picture Rocks?”
“If you go by the papers,” Dad admitted indignantly. “And that’s about as straight as the rest of the stuff they print! He was sick, all right. But he ain’t no tenderfoot. And if he’s a crook, I’m Saint Cecilia makin’ music, with angels dropping roses on my halo.”
He looked so far from this that his guest couldn’t repress a laugh.
“He’s a fine, clean, upstandin’ young man,” warmly declared the old man. “He come here one night inquirin’ for a hombre, and I took to him right off. Next day I had occasion to help him. Dolan’s dragged me over the coals for doin’ it, but I’d do it again.” His gaze went from the shimmering miles of range to the Montezumas. After a time he said grimly: “If René Rand don’t come for Zion Jore, who can say what’ll happen, or when.”
Stirred by his tone, but reassured by a glance at the sleeping town, the stranger said: “Aren’t you taking the situation too serious? There’s been other badmen, and they all came to one end. It’s ridiculous to suppose this loony kid can ride around long, robbing, killing.”
He was abashed by the deadly seriousness with which his host took issue with this. “It’s ridiculous to suppose in this case. Zion Jore can’t be took too serious. There’s never been a outlaw like him. Oh, mebbe he ain’t got all his buttons. But he’s got more of what he has got … savvy … than lots of smart men. It’s what’s missin’ that makes him dangerous!”
He went on with moving solemnity. “Friend, it’s what Zion Jore ain’t got that gives me cold chills to contemplate … right now, a hundred in the shade. It would make the hottest Jore sympathizers draw a long breath of relief to hear that young fellow had been corralled safe. You’ve mebbe read, and you’ve heard more here, but it’s plain to be seen that you don’t savvy Zion Jore. He’s like this.”
As he hitched closer to his guest, he continued gravely: “He’s likely the best shot with rifle or six-gun ever seen in the West. He’s got no sense of responsibility, no savvy about the sacredness of property rights, nor the meanin’ of the word fear. The best safeguard around any institution is the knowledge of its protection. But it means nothin’ to Zion. He don’t know. He’d rush in where the nerviest, willin’est outlaw would balk cold.
“Not ten feet from where you’re a-settin’,” cried Doc Peppin, “he killed his first man! Nobody blamed him for that. Nobody blames him for anything yet. But he’s got to be stopped. Though how that’s to be accomplished …”
Then he told of the golden horse he had so long believed a myth.
“And it’s more of a myth,” he frankly confessed, “since I’ve seen it in the flesh. For it ain’t possible for a horse to run like that horse runs. And bullets don’t touch him. He’s a devil on hoofs. A wild yellow phantom.”
But the stranger wasn’t hearing him. He was staring down the street with incredulous eyes. Could Dad Peppin’s description of the horse be vivid enough to cause him to materialize there in the heat and hush—so realistically, that his golden flanks gleamed wet, as with sweat. Was that Black Wing standing down there or … “Is it,” gasped the guest, pointing a shaking hand, “there … by the bank! Am I seeing things?”
Dad looked, and his eyes almost leaped from their sockets. Wildly, he sprang up. “Black Wing! What’s he doin’ here alone? Where’s Zion? Does this mean Dolan’s …?”
“A young fellow just got off!” cried the guest. “Or I imagined him! A young chap in buckskin.”
He winced at the bite of the old man’s clutch. “Where did you imagine he went?”
“In the bank!”
Dad Peppin groaned. His eyes sought the jail, as if to call the Jores from their cells. Then he was plunging down the steps of Trail’s End, the stranger hard after him, trying to calm him.
“We may be wrong! He’s not the only young fellow wears buckskin! Black Wing’s not the only cream-colored stallion!”
But before their racing feet hit the sidewalk, a sharp retort shattered the quiet. And out of the door of the bank down there burst a wild figure—a Big Sandy man, who looked wildly around, then raced toward them, eyes popping, spurred to another admirable burst of speed by a second gunshot!
Meeting them halfway of the block, he seized Dad Peppin, clinging to him as to his one hope of salvation, panting, in a very hysteria of terror. “Zion Jore!” He tried for more, throat working, face contorted with as much pain as if he were swallowing something scalding. “I … I was at that desk … behind the door, signin’ a check. I’d hurried to cash it … before closin’ time! I saw him come in! And he poked a gun through the wicket, and … I run … and he shot at me!”
“You’re crazy!” Dad tried to jerk free. “What Zion Jore aims at, he hits!”
Then, riveting him, struck an ear-shattering clang-clang-clang as the electric gong before the bank set up a wild alarm, calling for help as with human tongue, seeming to shriek to the slumbering town, “Zion Jore! Zion Jore!”
The buckskin stallion at the curb madly pitched in his terror of it and of the bedlam that broke out around him, as Big S
andy awoke with a bang. Startled faces were thrust from windows. Doors slammed. The street was full of men, wildly demanding information of men, no better informed. Running to the bank, eyes on the bell as if it had done something terrible, while the cry was raised: “Zion Jore’s in there!”
With the courage of numbers, they were pushing to the very door, when it suddenly swung in their faces, and a young fellow stood there, a weighted canvas bag in one hand and in the other a black six-gun, from which they recoiled as if pushed back by an irresistible force. Coolly pausing to survey the frightened faces in the circle slowly backing away from him, the young man suddenly laughed, a wild laugh that unnerved them and sent them stampeding for the nearest covering.
Old Dad Peppin stood his ground, and he made no move to stop Zion. Any interference would be madness. A word, a sign, would result in more blood being shed, more blood on this young outlaw’s head. He could only watch, fascinated by Zion Jore’s absolute lack of fear, as he sauntered to the curb, soothed the pitching horse with a word and, as careless as though he were upon legitimate business, as though there were no threatening eyes on him, no gong clamoring for more men to come and kill him, no sheriff and deputies bursting down the street with guns drawn, he swung the bag up before his saddle, swung on behind it, and shot like a rocket between the bank building and the grocery store next to it—unscathed by the bullet Dolan sent after him, or by the charge of buckshot from a sawed-off shotgun, leveled on him from a window, or from a dozen shots that rang out from different quarters.
“They’re right!” Dad Peppin swore awesomely to himself, seeing man and horse emerge from the alley and streak up the road behind Trail’s End. “He can’t be human!”
Then he joined the mob now fighting to get into the bank to see what had happened. There were two men in the cashier’s cage—one, leaning weakly against the wall, white as paper, lips compressed, while the other applied a bandage to his bleeding arm and gave Sheriff Dolan an account of the hold-up at the same time.
“Me and Chet,” the cashier was saying, “was busy makin’ up the money. Didn’t see him, till we heard his voice. Saw his gun first … looked like a cannon to me. He told me to hand out that bag of money. I made to do it. But Chet, here, made a dive for the gun under the counter. Jore got him through the arm, but Chet rolled to the button and set the alarm goin’. He got all the cash in sight. Not much.”
It wasn’t the money Big Sandy was clamoring for, but Zion Jore. His boldness terrified them. Why didn’t the law protect them? What were they paying taxes for? If Dolan couldn’t handle this situation, why didn’t he say so like a man? They’d elect somebody who could.
“Zion Jore,” was the outspoken threat, “or a recall!”
Wouldn’t that be something to write up?
“I’ll get him,” promised Sheriff Pat Dolan, inwardly writhing. “This time I’ll bring him in, dead or alive! I want a dozen men on fast horses. And I want a fast horse for myself.”
Whirling on the man in a white Stetson who was standing beside him, a fine-looking man, whom nobody touched even in this press, who all now watched with respect, Dolan said: “Luke, didn’t you say you’d brought two of your racers up here, so you could supervise their trainin’?”
“Goblin and Mate are here … yes.”
“Waal, I want one of ’em.”
Big Sandy gasped at his audacity in commandeering horses of such worth for a manhunt. They understood, they thought, the awful reluctance of Chartres, and intensely admired the man, as he shrugged and said: “You’re the sheriff.”
“Then scatter!” Dolan waved at the rest. “We’ll take up the trail in five minutes. Meet at the jail.”
Grasping Luke Chartres by the arm, he was striding down the street to the barn where the thoroughbreds were stabled, when a hoarse cry from the bank drew his eyes back. The mob was pointing up at the high bluff behind Trail’s End, crying, as with one voice: “There he is!”
Dolan and Chartres looked, and there he was. Up there, in full view of the town, just out of rifle range, that wild young being sat the wild stallion, looking down, as if enjoying the commotion he had caused.
“Mockin’ us!” huffed the sheriff. “This has gone far enough!”
Zion Jore was still there when, less than five minutes later, a dozen men, mounted on fast horses, the sheriff and Chartres on two of the fastest in the West, raced away from the jail.
Still there he was, in plain view of the imprisoned Jores, who had heard the shots, the gong, and the posse rallying. They had divined the rest. In agony, as men and horses swarmed up the bluff, they strained at the bars and cursed their helplessness, and all the while Zion and Black Wing stood out motionless against the sky.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE RUSE
Still there, contempt and defiance infuriatingly expressed in his every pose, was Zion Jore, when the posse had galloped halfway up the road that wound to the top of the bluff. They thought he was going to make a stand, and, in fear of his deadly aim, some of the riders were slowing when, with a mocking wave of his hand, he whirled the stallion and was gone.
Pounding over the crest, they saw him far down, doubling back around the town toward Placer Creek and the rough hills north.
“He’s overreached himself this time!” yelled Dolan to the man on the sleek racer beside him. “It ain’t in reason that yellow demon can run clean away from Mate and Goblin! He’s got less than a half mile’s start. Luke, we’ve got him!”
He expected equal enthusiasm from the man who had spent a fortune in time and money to achieve that end. Getting no response of any kind, suddenly realizing that Chartres had hardly opened his mouth since he had seen Zion Jore get on his horse before the bank, he shot a glance at him. But the face of Chartres was strained on the fleeing stallion—strained out of all expression, as it had been last spring when he said he’d sell his soul for Black Wing, that he was selling …
“What’s got into you?” The sheriff reined his racing mount close. “You’ve been turnin’ this state wrong-side-out for that horse! Why the chill all at once, now you got a chance? Don’t you want him?”
The man turned on him fiercely. “Want him?” His voice was strained out of all semblance to the voice of Luke Chartres. “With the Handicap less than a month off? With Saval saying I’ve stayed out of the racing this season because I’m licked? Because I’m such a poor sport, I won’t … Want Crusader’s colt!”
His wild laugh seemed the echo of another wild laugh to Dolan. Then what was wrong with him? Sore about using his thoroughbreds? No. The ends justified the means. Chartres would give every horse he owned for Black Wing. Well, he couldn’t worry about Chartres, now that he had a chance to make a clean sweep of the Jores.
More determined to do this than he had ever been to do anything in his official life, the sheriff gave his racer his head. Chartres, on Mate, kept pace with him. The rest of the posse dropped back. Neck to neck, the thoroughbreds splashed through Placer Creek. Climbing out on the opposite bank, Dolan sighted the golden horse—not heading north, but streaking straight across the open sage flats—and he raved to Chartres.
“He is crazy! Givin’ us a break like this! If he’d kept to the hills, he mighta shook us! But he’s took to the level. Thinks he can outrun us without any trouble. He don’t know what horses we got!” In his triumph, he flung at the fugitive: “Kid, you sure did overreach yourself!”
Had Zion done that? Had he underrated the speed of his pursuers, trusting to Black Wing to run away from them on the level stretches? It seemed so. For the pick of the Val Verde stables, fresh and eager to go, put their best into that race, a best that had won Chartres many a prize; a best that—to the utter dumbfounding of the men on them—brought them steadily upon the golden stallion.
As they splashed through the sage, Dolan roared: “Where’s all this speed I been hearin’ about? Bunk … that’s what it is
! He’s had you all hypnotized! He’s fast alongside common range saddle stock. But he can’t run with a real horse! Look how we’re comin’ up on him. Tough luck, Luke! I don’t wonder you’re down in the mouth.”
He considered the race all but over. He was, in fact, already planning the capture. It was going to be a ticklish piece of work. As soon as Zion Jore saw he was caught, he’d turn to shoot it out. And he, Dolan, couldn’t sling lead with such a dead shot. He’d have to fire the instant he got within six-gun range, and pray he was a better judge of that than this young maniac. Only a matter of seconds—he drew his gun.
But Luke Chartres, rising in his stirrups, as if his whole physical being revolted at what was happening, saw they were no longer gaining. On the contrary, the stallion was running away from them, as easily as they had run away from the posse. And he thrilled to the quick of his horse-loving heart by the smoothness and ease and incredible speed of that flight.
“Is that bunk?” he hurled at the sheriff over the pound of their horses. “He’s not been running … up to this! The fellow’s been holding him in, testing our speed. Crazy? Like a fox! And that stallion … look at him go! He’s not running with range stock now.”
Pat Dolan looked and had faith in the golden horse. Luke Chartres watched and envisaged him running from Saval’s Meteor, as he now was from the pick of his string, winning Val Verde a glorious revenge.
Yet, as Zion swerved toward the wild foothills of the Montezumas, he told Dolan it was no use going on. “We can’t get within miles of him.”
But, even as he spoke, he was amazed to see that the stallion was falling back again. Steadily, they gained, almost within range. Black Wing was tiring. Weeks of running were telling, but, just as he decided this, Zion flashed a backward glance and, seeing them so close, bent low over his horse, and again, swiftly, effortlessly, the stallion pulled away from them.
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