by Max Brand
There was no escape now for Tom. The horse had seen him. The man would see him in another instant. He came out of the shrubs with a rush. He saw the rifle swung up. Then he leaped for the rider and with upflung left hand touched the muzzle of the gun of Themis. It discharged its contents just beside Tom’s ear. Then, his lunge carrying him on and up, one hand fell on the shoulder of Themis, another circled his neck.
Themis was torn from the saddle and brought heavily to the earth. Half stunned by the fall, he allowed the rifle to be jerked from his nervous hands. He was forced upon his back. In a trice, hands and feet were tied. Then he was wrenched to a sitting posture and found himself confronting the muddy, dripping figure which stood there, rifle in hand.
“You are still alive,” said a stern voice. “You are her father, and therefore you are still alive. But the others, when I find them, shall die. They murdered the poor horse while it swam in the water. How had that horse harmed them? They shall die as the horse died. Tell them that when they come. I have let them hunt me like a dog through the mountains. When they come again, tell them that I shall shoot, and I never miss.”
He threw rifle and revolver far off into the river, while the frightened horse fled, neighing. Then he ran to the edge of the river and dived into it.
Themis, looking after him, saw the water close above him with hardly a ripple to break the surface. He came up far toward the center of the stream, swimming strongly, and his face buried. He reached the farther bank. He climbed the shore and stood a moment, a dripping, shining figure. Then he struck across country with a long, free stride and was lost in the moon haze.
CHAPTER XVIII
“WE START THIS afternoon,” said John Hampton Themis with the cheery finality of one who expects opposition but pretends that he does not dream of it. “I have completed the arrangements, my dear. New York and then a boat for Paris.”
But Gloria, for a moment, merely tapped her foot and watched him. She seemed to be more interested in him than in any effect this statement might have upon her.
“You’ll have a beautiful time, Dad,” she said, “I wish you joy.”
“And you,” said Themis, “will have your Paris - as much of it as you can stand.”
“Paris?” she said in mock surprise. “Paris for me? No, no, Dad. I’ve finally become convinced that you are right. I’m too young to do justice to Paris, or for Paris to do justice to me. I’ll wait. I don’t care how many years it is - but I’ll wait for another time.”
Themis cleared his throat, began a sentence, and changed his mind.
“Just what are your plans?” he asked.
“I haven’t seen nearly enough of Turnbull Valley,” she said.
She whistled softly. A tiny little form whisked across the room, ran up her skirt, and perched upon her knee. It was the tree squirrel. She began to pet it idly.
“So you stay here?” asked Themis, staring fixedly at the squirrel.
“Yes, thank you. I’ve barely become acclimated, you see. It would be a shame to leave now. And for my part, I don’t see how you can leave, Dad.”
“No?”
“Certainly not. Every man in the valley expects you to stay here until you’ve caught the wild man - the Indian, as you call him.”
Themis flushed.
“I freely admit,” he said, “that I was in error. He’s white. As for staying here to capture him, you’ve surely not forgotten what happened the other night?”
“In what way?”
“He had me helpless under his gun, and he let me live.”
“People may say that you’re afraid to face him again.”
Once more Themis flushed.
“I’ll have to endure that,” he said quietly. “My friends, I hope, will not believe it. And as for the others - well, no matter what they think, I can’t stay on the trail of a man who had me at his mercy, then let me go after I had hunted him for his life.”
He sighed, and his glance probed the distance with a singular regret.
“How he did it,” he said, “I still can’t understand. I look back at it, and it still doesn’t seem possible that any human being could have been capable of such activity. It was like the rush of a tiger - like the rush of a tiger, on my honor!”
He rose and paced the room hurriedly. His voice was low, while speaking of that incredible thing.
“He must have been flat on the ground when the horse shied, Glory. But he came off from it with a bound as though he were made of rubber. And the second leap had him at me. I’ll never forget that face. His teeth were glinting in the moonshine. His long hair was tangled with mud and dirt. He looked like a devil. All that happened before I could get in a shot!”
He shook his head.
“When he caught my shoulders - gad, his fingers seemed iron! The flesh is still black and blue!”
He rubbed that shoulder meditatively.
“Frankly,” he said, “I’m afraid of him. I’d hate like the devil to have to trail him. But the worst of it is that, while I might go with a gun to shoot him, he’d not take his chances to shoot in turn, because I’m your father. And that, Glory, brings me to the crux of the matter!”
She nodded quietly, but she drew the tree squirrel suddenly close to her.
“Glory,” he said slowly, “you want to stay here because of that wild man. Tell me truly.”
“That’s the exact truth,” said Gloria. “You’ve seen through me, Dad.”
He shuddered. There was such pain in his face that she lowered her eyes, unable to watch him.
“Gloria,” he said sadly, “it’s my fault, I know. It’s entirely my fault. I’ve let you grow up doing as you please. I’ve spoiled you terribly. And now you’ll fight for your own way. It’s impossible for you to give up anything you want.”
She slipped out of the chair and went to him and took his hands.
The squirrel ran up the back of the chair and perched on the top of it, peering at her with its bright little eyes.
“Don’t say that, Dad,” she pleaded. “I know you’ve spoiled me, but there’s hardly a thing in the world that I wouldn’t do for you if you seriously asked me.”
“Except to leave the Turnbull with me now?”
She bowed her head.
“Glory!” he cried in agony. “Do you mean it? Even if I beg you, as I do now, to come with me?”
“Oh, Dad,” she answered, her eyes filling with tears, “if you only would ask proof of me in some other way. If I could only show you how dear you are to me, and what I would suffer for you! But this one thing -”
He released her hands and stepped to the window, breathing deep. Then he forced himself to face her again. It seemed to Gloria that he had aged by ten years in the past day.
“It means a tragedy if you stay here,” he said. “My dear, we all feel that we know ourselves better than others can possibly know us. But don’t you think we may sometimes be wrong? I think I understand you, Glory, simply because I love you so much. And I tell you that if you see this wild man again while your brain is still in a riot from that first meeting, you’ll lose control of yourself. Before you know it, you’ll be married, and your life will be ruined!”
She paused to show that she was taking all his words to heart.
“Will you listen to my viewpoint?” she said at last.
“Of course,” said Themis. “I want you to talk - talk about everything. Get it out of your heart and into words if you can!”
“Suppose you look at it in this way, then. If I never see him again, if I never talk with him again, the thought of him will haunt me. Dad, this room is filled with him. He was here five minutes, but he has left something in every corner of the room. The sound of his voice has never run out of my ears. I keep seeing his face - sometimes I’ve turned around short in going down the hall because it seemed as if he were coming behind me with that silent step of his! Do you understand how I feel now?”
“Glory,” he said, “let’s take another angle. If you stay
here, the man’s devotion to you will bring him down to the town again. And when he comes down, he’ll be caught. He escaped once, you know by how small a margin. A second time he can’t escape. And when he’s caught, he’ll be hanged for murder. Nothing can prevent that.”
“It’s not true!” cried Gloria. “He told me with his own voice that he did not kill Dick Walker!”
“I believe him as thoroughly as you do,” said Themis. “But that does not spoil the case against him. He had a motive for killing Walker. His trail was seen going there. What more could be needed? He’d be hanged, Gloria.”
“An innocent man! Oh, Dad, it’s too horrible! I’ll find some means of preventing it!”
“That’s a blind hope. If you really are fond of the wild man - of Tom Parks, as you call him - the best thing is to leave Turnbull Valley, because, so long as you stay here, you’re the bait for a trap that may catch him.”
“He has gone himself to find the murderer of Walker.”
“But the trail has been wiped out by the rains before this. You mustn’t console yourself with absolute impossibilities, my dear.”
“Oh,” she cried, bewildered, “there will be some way!”
Her father shrugged his shoulders.
“Besides,” he said, “even if he dodges the law for a time, he’ll eventually be captured.”
“They’ve failed for six years.”
“What’s six years to the law? It will wait a lifetime. Eventually, it wins. It has forever. It uses a million hands. One man cannot stand against it, particularly since Parks has become notorious. Man hunters will come from all parts of the West. They’ll run his trail through every month of the years. Finally, he’ll go down. Gloria, if you were to attach yourself to him, you’d attach yourself to a doomed cause.”
He saw, by the way her head went back, that he had made a wrong step.
“Dad!” she exclaimed. “Do you want me to leave the ship because the rats have left it? Do you want me to be a coward?”
He gritted his teeth.
“Think of your friends, Gloria.”
“He’s worth all of them!”
“How could he meet them?”
“They would be honored by a syllable from him, or else they’re not worthy to speak with him! But don’t you see, I only want to meet him once more and make sure? Perhaps it will be different when I see him again. The glamour will be gone.”
He shook his head sadly.
“Not with you, Gloria. It needs more time than you’ll have between meetings. No man has ever meant anything to you. And now you’ll cling to this first enthusiasm -”
Suddenly, he stopped talking. He went to her and took her in his arms.
“My dear,” he said, “if I were a religious man, I should pray God to help us both do right in this thing.”
CHAPTER XXIX
WHEN TOM PARKS, well before sunup, reached that cleft in the hills where he would find the stallion and big Jerry, he sent a long screaming whistle over the trees and listened until he heard a whinny faint in the distance. After that, he did not wait for either the horse or the bear to come. They would find him and wait.
In the meantime, the good men of Turnbull were mustering and making ready for another hunt. But it would still be a short interval before sunup and their start, so Tom lay down in a corner behind a rock, where the wind could not get at him, and was instantly asleep.
For two hours he lay without stirring, and when he wakened the fresh light of dawn filled the sky. Beside him was Peter, cropping the grass. In the near distance was the bulk of Jerry, paying his attention to a colony of ants. He had already devoured the myriads of half a dozen anthills. Now he was demolishing a seventh nation, but at the voice of Tom he whirled and came with his lumbering but swift stride across the clearing.
Peter, in the meantime, began to sweep around the returned master in swift loops, flirting his heels into the air and shaking his head, bucking and gamboling more in air than on firm ground. As for Jerry, he stood upon his hind legs, viewed the master carefully, then went around him, sniffing the strange man scents which he found, and growling terribly all the while. Eventually, he decided that all was well and allowed his head to be rubbed for a moment.
But there was only a moment to be spared; In ten minutes Tom had taken out the saddle from the place where he had cached it, and the journey of the day was started. And, before he had gone two miles, he looked back to a height and saw them coming, the stream of a score of dogs and fully as many riders.
He climbed into the rougher country, for it was there that Jerry could make progress that defied the imitation of men on horseback. From another eminence he stared down and saw that two other packs were out, two other groups of hard riders were following them.
These things, however, he viewed with only a dim concern. He would break their hearts before the day had ended. But he had more to do than simply avoid a few posses. Far away was the place where Dick Walker had ended his evil life and been buried. Thither he must go and hunt around the place for the trail of the murderer. If he could find that trail, if it would lead him to the man, if he could extract the confession from him, then he was free to ride down into Turnbull and meet Gloria unafraid.
But how many “ifs” lay between!
All that day he worked swiftly through the mountains. Among the rocks, he descended the steep places on foot, at a run. He climbed the difficult ridges seated on the back of Jerry, and he covered the open stretches on the back of the stallion.
Here and there he stopped, in favorable places, to lay out trail problems which occupied him five minutes, but which would take the pursuit ten times that long to unravel. In the twilight he found and shot a deer, which provided ample for himself and Jerry. And it was still the dark before dawn when he started on the trail again. In the mid afternoon, he found the heap of rocks which marked the grave of Dick Walker.
But as for the trail of the true murderer - it was like hunting for a needle in a haystack! In the first place, days had intervened since the murder, and rains had washed down the soil. In the second place, the party of Themis had trampled all the region around the grave.
So, while Peter grazed and Jerry dug for roots, Tom cast a corkscrew trail around the place, cutting for signs with an eager diligence.
Darkness closed on him, and still he had not succeeded. With the dawn, he was up again and at it, hunting feverishly now, for the posse must be close upon his heels. And in the midmorning he found the first thing which might be of assistance.
It was the empty shell of a forty-five-caliber bullet, such as had been fired into the head of Walker. It lay a full mile from the place of the shooting in the direction of the eastern mountains. Of course, it might have been thrown there by anyone. Any member of the Themis party might have gone out this far and taken a shot at a rabbit and then thrown the empty shell out of his gun. But there was a chance in ten that it was the shell belonging to the slug that had killed Walker, and in that case the place where it lay meant something to Tom.
He calculated exactly a line between that spot and the site of Walker’s grave. If that line were projected into the mountains, it might give him the course which the slayer had taken. But the projection pointed straight at a mountainside, and certainly it was not probable that a fugitive would take that steep ascent instead of sticking to the canyons where he could have made far better time!
But Tom could not stay to argue probabilities. Possibilities were all that he could work on. He struck ahead, aiming his course with nicety for the very peak of the mountain, riding in just the course that a horseman would have been most likely to take if he had ridden in that direction.
By noon he was halfway up the side of the mountain, but there had not been the ghost of a sign to encourage him along the trail. Here he paused while Jerry busied himself with a chipmunk’s burrow. After half an hour’s rest he went on again until he reached the mountaintop early in the afternoon.
There he found a small
spring welling out of the ground. The sight of it excited Tom. He had covered since dawn a stretch of ground which would have made a good day’s march for an ordinary horse and man. Even Peter was a little wearied by his efforts. And, if the murderer had indeed taken that trail, the sight of running water must have been too great a temptation to him. Here he would surely have camped, even if he did not build a fire.
But there was no sign, still. From the pine saplings no tips had been cut to make a bed. And if deadwood had been cut, it was impossible for Tom to find the place. Though, for that matter, some of the little, dead shrubs might have been pulled up by the roots, and the rains would have washed the holes full of sediment. He looked uneasily at the rumble of stones around the spring, and his stanch heart began to fail him. To be sure, he had learned patience in an incomparable school, but he felt that the trail had vanished into thin air if, indeed, it had ever been a trail at all.
Jerry came lumbering from his root digging and began to tumble the stones over. Under some he found grubs which were licked up by that restless, red tongue. Under others he found nothing. But he went on carelessly until a great, two-hundred-pound boulder was tugged over for the mere sake of showing his strength, perhaps, and he began sniffing at the dark undersurface, all sweating with moisture. His growl drew Tom nearer. He looked down to the bottom of the rock for the want of something better to do.
It was very dark indeed. The moisture alone could hardly account for its blackness. All the rest of the boulder was a dull gray. Suddenly, he leaned and drew a fingertip across the surface of the stone. The tip was blackened by the contact, and Tom straightened with an exclamation of satisfaction.
There was only one way to account for that thin layer of soot. A fire had been built near the stone, which had later fallen upon its face. And it must have been a recent camp fire which had done the work, no matter if other traces of the fire were lacking. The heavy winds and the rains might have washed all other symbols of it away. This one was enough to set the heart of Tom on fire with hope.