The Coyote

by Roberts, James

  He listened dully to the voices until he heard a horse’s hoofs in front of the jail. He turned back with his face to the wall, and his hat tipped over his eyes, as a man entered the jail office with a stamp of boots and jingle of spurs.

  “Hello, constable,” he heard the sheriff say. “What luck?”

  “Couldn’t find the hoss,” came a disgruntled voice. “Looked all afternoon an’ till it got dark for him.”

  “Confound it!” exclaimed Neal. “The horse must have been somewhere aroun’ close. He sure didn’t walk down the valley.”

  “That’s probably right,” said the other. “I left a couple of your men out there to keep up searching when daylight comes. That feller Lamy showed us about where they left the hosses––his hoss an’ The Coyote’s––but they wasn’t there. He said there was a bunch of wild hosses in the valley an’ that they’d probably got away an’ gone with ’em. We saw the wild hosses, but we couldn’t get anywhere near ’em––couldn’t get near enough to see if any of ’em was wearin’ saddles or not. We had some chase while it lasted, I’ll recite.”

  “Did Lamy say how they came to leave their horses?” asked the sheriff in an annoyed tone.

  “It was The Coyote’s orders. Thought they’d be safer in the middle of the posse or something like that. Made Lamy leave the hosses an’ run for the house an’ made him get down in the cellar with him. Don’t know if he knew Lamy lived there or not, but reckon it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  The sheriff was pacing the floor of the office as his footfalls attested. “I’ve ordered that Lamy in to-morrow. I’ve a lot more questions to ask him. Well, you might as well get a few winks, constable; Brown and the rest of ’em have hit the hay. Even the prisoner is tired out, and that’s sayin’ something for as tough a bird as he is. But I wish I had his horse. I’ve got to have his horse!”

  Rathburn was smiling at the wall. He heard Neal walk to the door and look in. Receding footsteps told him that the constable was leaving. For a time there was silence in the outer office.

  Rathburn sat up quietly and began easing off his right boot. The boot came slowly, very slowly, as Rathburn worked at it, careful not to make any noise. Then, just as it came free, the sheriff again strode to the door and looked in.

  He saw Rathburn yawning, as the boot dropped on the floor.

  Rathburn looked at the sheriff sleepily as the official strode into the aisle and peered in between the bars. He tipped the bootless foot back on its toes as he lifted his other foot and tugged at the boot.

  “That you, sheriff?” he asked with another yawn. “The lights are so bad I can’t see good. Guess I’m a little groggy anyway. I was too danged tired when I went to sleep to take off my boots.”

  “You’ve got another ten hours to sleep,” said Neal with a scowl. “An’ you’ll have plenty of time to get rid of your saddle soreness. You’ll ride in automobiles and trains for a while an’ keep in out of the hot sun an’ the wet.”

  The sheriff laughed harshly at his own words.

  Rathburn let the other boot drop. “I expect I’ll get something to eat now an’ then, too?”

  “Feel hungry?” asked Neal.

  “Might chaw on a biscuit before I take another nap,” yawned the prisoner.

  “I’ll see if I can scare you up a bite,” said the sheriff, leaving.

  Rathburn heard him say something to some one in front. Then the sheriff went out of the building. The other man came in and looked at Rathburn curiously.

  He was of medium build, with white hair and a face seamed and lined and red. Rathburn instantly recognized in his jailer a man of the desert––possibly of the border country.

  “So you’re The Coyote,” said the jailer in a rather high-pitched voice.

  Rathburn winked at him. “That’s what they say,” he replied.

  “You size up to him, all right,” observed the man of the desert. “An’ I can tell quick enough when I get a good look at you an’ inspect your left forearm. I’ve had your descriptions in front of my eyes on paper an’ from a dozen persons that knowed you for three years!”

  “You been trailing me?” asked Rathburn curiously.

  “I have; an’ it ain’t no credit to this bunch here that they got you, for I was headed in this direction myself an’ arrived ’most as soon as you did.”

  “You from Arizona?” asked Rathburn, grasping his right foot in his left hand.

  “I’m from Arizony an’ Mexico an’ a few other places,” was the answer. “I’ve helped catch men like you before, Coyote.”

  Rathburn frowned, still keeping his hand over his right foot. “I don’t like that word, Coyote,” he said softly, holding the other’s gaze between the bars. “A coyote is a cowardly breed of animal, isn’t it?”

  “An’ a tricky one,” said the jailer. “I ain’t sayin’ you’re a coward; but you’re tricky, an’ that’s bad enough.”

  “Maybe so,” agreed Rathburn. “Ah––here’s our friend, his nibs, the sheriff. He went out to rustle me some grub. He wants to keep me fat for hanging!”

  His laugh rang through the jail, empty save for himself and the two officers. But the temporary jailer hesitated, looking at Rathburn’s eyes, before he turned to the sheriff.

  “Open the door and I’ll take it in to him,” ordered the sheriff. “Can’t get this stuff through the bars. You might keep him covered.”

  The jailer’s hand flew to his hip for his gun as he also brought up a large key on a ring. He unlocked the door to the cage and held it open while he kept his gun trained upon Rathburn.

  The sheriff entered and placed the food on the stool and a large bowl of coffee on the floor beside it. Then he backed out, watching Rathburn keenly as the latter sat on his bench with his right foot in his hand.

  When the door clanged shut and the key rattled in the lock, Rathburn let down his right foot, took two steps, and pulled the stool to the bench. He stepped back and secured the coffee. Then he began to eat and drink, keeping his right foot tipped on its toes, while the two officials watched him attentively.

  “Sheriff,” said Rathburn suddenly, between bites on a huge meat sandwich, “could you let me have a stub of a lead pencil an’ a sheet of paper to write a letter on?”

  “Easy enough,” answered Neal. “Course, you know all mail that goes out of the jail is read by us before it’s delivered––if it’s delivered at all.”

  “I’ll chance it,” snapped out Rathburn.

  As the sheriff left to get the writing materials, with the jailer following him, doubtless for a whispered confab as to what Rathburn might be wanting to write and its possible bearing on his capture, the prisoner hastily ran his left hand down into his right sock and with some difficulty withdrew a peculiar-shaped leather case about ten inches long and nearly the width of his foot. This he put within his shirt.

  When the officials returned he had finished his repast and was waiting for them near the bars with a smile of gratitude on his lips.

  “This may be a confession I’m going to write,” he said, grinning at Neal. “It’s going to take me a long time, I reckon, but you said I had something like ten hours for sleep, so I guess I can spare two or three for this effort at literary composition. I figure, sheriff, that this’ll be my masterpiece.”

  His look puzzled the sheriff as he took the pencil and paper through the bars and returned to his bunk. He drew up the stool and sat upon it. It was a little lower than the bench, so, putting his paper on the bench, he had a fairly good makeshift desk. He began to write steadily, and after a few minutes the sheriff and jailer retired to the office.

  It did not take Rathburn a quarter of an hour to write what he wished on the first of the several pieces of paper. He tore off what he had written, doubled it again and again into a small square, took out his sack of tobacco which he had been allowed to retain, and put it therein with the loose tobacco.

  Then he wrote for a few minutes on the second sheet of paper.

 
; When the sheriff looked in later he evidently was slowly and laboriously achieving a composition.

  Rathburn heard the sheriff go out of the front door a few minutes later. Instantly he was alert. He drew on his boots. He surmised that the sheriff had gone out for something to eat and, though he wasn’t sure of this, it was true.

  “Oh, jailer!” he called amiably.

  The wrinkled face of the desert trailer appeared in the office doorway.

  Rathburn looked about from his seat on the stool. “This job ain’t none too easy, as it is,” he complained. “As a writer I’m a first-rate cow hand. Lemme take your knife to sharpen this pencil with. When I asked the sheriff for a stub of a pencil he took me at my word.”

  “Sure I’ll let you have my knife,” said the jailer sarcastically. “How about my gun––want that, too?”

  “Oh, come on, old-timer,” pleaded Rathburn. “The lead in this pencil’s worn clean down into the wood.”

  “Hand it over here an’ I’ll sharpen it,” said the jailer, drawing his pocketknife.

  Rathburn walked to the bars and held out the pencil. An amiable smile played on his lips. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said contritely. “I forgot it wasn’t jail etiquette to ask for a knife. But I ain’t had much experience in jail. Now according to his nibs, the sheriff, I’m in to get pretty well acquainted with ’em, eh?”

  He watched the jailer as he began sharpening the pencil.

  “Speaking of knives, now,” he continued in a confiding tone, “I got in a ruckus down near the border once an’ some gents started after me. One of ’em got pretty close––close enough to take some skin off my shoulder with a bullet. He just sort of compelled me to shoot back.”

  “I suppose you killed him,” observed the jailer, pausing in his work of sharpening the pencil.

  “I ain’t saying,” replied Rathburn. “Anyways I had a hole-up down there for a few days, an’ as luck would have it, I had to put up with a Mexican. All that Mex would do was argue that a knife was better than a gun. He claimed it was sure and made no noise––those were his hardest talking points, an’ I’ll be danged if there isn’t something in it.

  “But what I was gettin’ at is that I didn’t have nothing to do, an’ that Mexican got me to practicing knife throwing. You know how slick those fellows are at throwing a blade. Well, in the couple of weeks that I hung aroun’ there he coached me along till I could throw a knife as good as he could. He thought it was great sport, teaching me to throw a knife so good, that a way.

  “Since I left down there I’ve sort of practiced that knife-throwing business now and then, just for fun. Anyways I thought it was just for fun. But now I see, jailer, that it was my luck protecting me. Anything you learn is liable to prove handy some time. Don’t move an inch or I’ll let you have it!”

  Rathburn’s hand snapped out of his shirt and up above his right shoulder.

  The man from the desert shuddered involuntarily as he saw the yellow light from the lamp play fitfully upon a keen, white blade.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XII

  AGAINST HIS ETHICS

  Rathburn’s eyes held the other’s as completely as would have been the case if he were invested with a power to charm in some occult way. Moreover, every trace of his amiable, confiding smile was gone. His gaze was hard and cold and gleaming. His face was drawn into grim lines. When he spoke he talked smoothly, rapidly, and with an edge to his words which convinced his listener that he was in deadly earnest.

  “I’m not used to jails, my friend, an’ I don’t aim to stay here. You’re not very far away an’ these bars are wide enough for me to miss ’em; but I don’t think I could miss you.”

  The jailer looked in horror at the gleaming knife which Rathburn held by its hilt with the blade pointing backward. The jailer was from the border; he knew the awful possibilities of a quick motion of the wrist in that position, a half turn of the knife as it streaked toward its target. He shuddered again.

  “Now just edge this way about two steps so your holster will be against the bars,” Rathburn instructed. “I can drop you where you stand, reach through the bars an’ drag you close if need be; but I’m banking on you having some good sense.”

  The jailer, without moving the hands which held the pencil and his pocketknife, sidled up against the bars.

  Rathburn leaned forward. Keeping his right hand high and tipped back, ready for the throw, he reached out with his left, just through the bars, and secured the jailer’s gun.

  “Now it’s all off,” he said quietly. “If the sheriff or anybody else comes before I get out of here I’m just naturally going to have to live up to the reputation for shooting that they’ve fastened on me. Unlock the door.”

  The jailer wet his lips with his tongue. The pencil and pocketknife fell to the floor. Covered by his own gun, now in Rathburn’s hand, he moved to the door, brought out his key, and opened it. Still keeping him covered, Rathburn backed to the bench, snatched up his coat, and walked out of the cage, motioning to the jailer to precede him into the office.

  There he slipped the gun in his holster and put on his coat. The jailer reckoned better than to try to leap upon him while he was thus engaged; the prisoner’s speed with a six-gun was well known.

  Rathburn drew a peculiar leather case from within his shirt, put the knife in it, and stowed it away in a pocket. Then he turned on the jailer.

  “Maybe you think that was a mean trick––resorting to a knife,” he said pleasantly; “but all is fair in love and war and when a man’s in jail. You better sort of stand in one place while I look around a bit.”

  He backed behind the desk in the big office, opened two or three drawers, and brought out a pair of handcuffs. He moved around in front of the jailer again.

  “Hold out your hands,” he commanded. “That’s it.” He snapped the handcuffs on with one hand while he kept the other on the butt of his gun.

  “You don’t seem to have much to say,” he commented.

  “What’s the use?” said the jailer. “I know when a man’s got me dead to rights. But I’ll be on your trail again, an’ if I ever get within shootin’ distance of you an’ see you first, you’ll never get another chance to pull a knife.”

  “Well said,” Rathburn admitted. “Now we understand each other. But I don’t intend for you to ever get within shooting distance of me.”

  Rathburn glanced casually about. “Now it seems to me,” he resumed, “that most of these fellows who gum up their jail breaks make a mistake by hurrying. Suppose you just walk natural-like through that door and into the cage I just had the foresight to leave. That’s it––right on in.”

  He turned the key which the jailer had left in the lock. “Now you’re all right unless you start hollering,” said Rathburn.

  He stood quietly in the doorway between the office and the cages. The man from the desert studied him. He saw a variety of expressions flit over Rathburn’s face––anger, determination, scorn, resolve. He was deliberately ignoring his opportunity to make his escape while conditions were propitious; he was waiting!

  Although the jailer felt the urge to cry out in an endeavor to make himself heard outside the jail and thus bring help, something in the bearing of the man standing in the doorway made him keenly curious to watch the drama which he knew must be enacted sooner or later before his eyes, for The Coyote was certainly waiting for the sheriff.

  Rathburn now drew the jailer’s gun from his own holster and toyed with it to get its “feel” and balance. He dropped it back into the holster and in a wink of an eyelid it was back in his hand. The man from the desert gasped at the lightning rapidity of the draw. Time and again the gun virtually leaped from the holster into The Coyote’s hand at his hip, ready to spit forth leaden death. The jailer drew a long breath. The man was accustoming himself to the weapon which had come into his possession, making sure of it. Now he again stood motionless in the doorway, waiting––waiting–––

  Boots stam
ped upon the steps outside, and Rathburn drew back from the doorway in the aisle before the cages.

  The front door opened and a man entered.

  Both the man in the cage and the man in the aisle recognized the sheriff’s step as Neal closed the door, paused for a look about the office, and then walked toward the door leading into the jail proper.

  The jailer opened his mouth to sound a warning, but something in Rathburn’s gaze and posture held him silent. Rathburn’s body was tense; his gaze was glued to the doorway; his right hand with its slim, brown, tapered fingers, hung above the gun at his side.

  The sheriff loomed in the doorway. Without a flicker of surprise in his eyes he took in the situation. His lids half closed as his lips tightened to a thin, white line. He met Rathburn’s gaze and knew that he now faced The Coyote in the role which had won him his sinister reputation.

  “Did I mention to you that I wasn’t used to jails, sheriff?” said Rathburn evenly, his words carrying crisp and clear. “I don’t fancy ’em. But I needed the sleep and the meal. Now I’m going. Do you recollect I said no one ever took my gun from me but what I got it back? I had to borrow this one from the gent in the cage. I’ll take my gun, sheriff––now!”

  Neal had watched him closely. He saw that while he was speaking The Coyote did not for an instant relax his vigilance. The merest resemblance of a move would precipitate gun play.

  He turned abruptly, and with Rathburn following him closely, went into the private room off the jail office. He pointed to the other’s gun which lay upon the flat desk where many had curiously inspected it.

  Rathburn took it in his left hand and ascertained at a glance that it wasn’t loaded. Therefore he elected to carry it in his left hand.

  “I won’t take a chance on feeding it right now, sheriff,” he said. “Under the circumstances it would be right awkward. If you make up your mind to draw I’ll have to depend on a strange gun.”

  Sheriff Neal’s eyes glittered; his lips parted just a little.

  “Now if you’ll walk back toward the cage, sheriff,” Rathburn prompted. “Correct––don’t stumble.”