by Unknown
"I'll leave you at the corner," she said. "Go back of that house and through the barbed-wire fence. You'll be in the sage then."
"Come with me to the fence," he whispered. "I got something to tell you."
She looked at him, sharply, coldly. "You've got nothing to tell me that I want to hear. I'm not doing this for you, but to save the lives of my friends. Understand that."
They were for the moment in the shadow of a great cottonwood. Houck stopped, devouring her with his hungry eyes. Bad as the man was, he had the human craving of his sex. The slim grace of her, the fundamental courage, the lift of the oval chin, touched a chord that went vibrating through him. He snatched her to him, crushing his kisses upon the disturbing mouth, upon the color spots that warmed her cheeks.
She was too smothered to cry out at first. Later, she repressed the impulse. With all her strength she fought to push him from her.
A step sounded, a cry, the sound of a smashing blow going home. Houck staggered back. He reached for a revolver.
June heard herself scream. A shot rang out. The man who had rescued her crumpled up and went down. In that horrified moment she knew he was Bob Dillon.
CHAPTER XLIII
NOT EVEN POWDER-BURNT
Houck stood over the prostrate man, the smoking revolver in his hand, on his lips a cruel twist and in his throat a wolfish snarl.
June, watching him with eyes held in a fascination of terror, felt that at any moment he might begin pumping shots into the supine body. She shook off the palsy that held her and almost hurled her soft young body at him.
"Don't!" she begged. "Don't!" Cold fingers clutched at his wrist, dragged down the barrel of the forty-five.
"He had it comin'. He was askin' for it," the outlaw said. He spoke huskily, still looking down at the crumpled figure.
The girl felt in him the slackness of indecision. Should he shoot again and make sure? Or let the thing go as it was? In an instant he would have made up his mind.
She spoke quickly, words tumbling out pell-mell. "You must hurry--hurry! When they heard that shot--Listen! There's some one coming. Oh, run, run!"
Her staccato warning deflected his mind from the course toward which it might have turned. He held up his head, listening. The slap of footsteps on a board walk could be plainly heard. A voice lifted itself in question into the night. The door of Dolan's opened and let out a fan-shaped shaft of light. The figures of men could be seen as they surged across the lit space into the darkness. June had spoken the truth. He must hurry if he was to escape. To shoot again now would be to advertise the spot where he was.
He wrenched his arm from her fingers and ran. He moved as awkwardly as a bear, but he covered ground swiftly. In a few seconds the night had swallowed him.
Instantly the girl was beside Dillon, on her knees, lifting his head into her arms. "Oh, Bob--Bob!" she wailed.
He opened his eyes.
"Where did he hit you?" she cried softly.
His face was puzzled. He did not yet realize what had taken place. "Hit me--who?"
"That Houck. He shot you. Oh, Bob, are you much hurt?"
Dillon was recalled to a pain in his intestines. He pressed his hand against the cartridge belt.
"It's here," he said weakly.
He could feel the wet blood soaking through the shirt. The thought of it almost made him lose consciousness again.
"L-let's have a look," a squeaky voice said.
June looked up. Blister had arrived panting on the scene. Larson was on his heels.
"We better carry him to the hotel," the cattleman said to the justice. "Who did it?"
"Houck," June sobbed. She was not weeping, but her breath was catching.
Bob tried to rise, but firm hands held him down. "I can walk," he protested. "Lemme try, anyhow."
"No," insisted June.
Blister knelt beside Dillon. "Where's the wound at?" he asked.
The young fellow showed him.
"J-June, you go get Doc T-Tuckerman," Blister ordered.
She flew to obey.
The fat man opened the shirt.
"Look out for the blood," Bob said, still faintly. "Ouch!"
Blister's hand was traveling slowly next to the flesh. "N-no blood here," he said.
"Why, I felt it."
"R-reckon not, son." Blister exposed his hand in the moonlight.
The evidence bore out what he said.
"Maybe it's bleeding internally," Bob said.
Larson had picked up the belt they had unstrapped from Dillon's waist. He was examining it closely. His keen eyes found a dent in the buckle. The buckle had been just above the spot where Bob complained of the pain.
"Maybe it ain't," Larson said. "Looks like he hit yore belt an' the bullet went flyin' wild."
A closer examination showed that this must be what had taken place. There was no wound on Bob's body. He had been stunned by the shock and his active imagination had at once accepted the assumption that he had been wounded.
Bob rose with a shamefaced laugh. The incident seemed to him very characteristic. He was always making a fool of himself by getting frightened when there was no need of it. One could not imagine Dud Hollister lying down and talking faintly about an internal bleeding when there was not a scratch on his body, nor fancying that he could feel blood soaking through his shirt because somebody had shot at him.
As the three men walked back toward the hotel, they met June and Dud. The girl cried out at sight of Bob.
"I'm a false alarm," he told her bitterly. "He didn't hit me a-tall."
"Hit his b-belt buckle. If this here T-Texas man lives to be a hundred he'll never have a closer call. Think of a fellow whangin' away with a forty-five right close to him, hitting him where he was aimin' for, and not even scratching Bob. O' course the shock of it knocked him cold. Naturally it would. But I'll go on record that our friend here was born lucky. I'd ought by rights to be holdin' an inquest on the remains," Blister burbled cheerfully.
June said nothing. She drew a long sigh of relief and looked at Bob to make sure that they were concealing nothing from her.
He met her look in a kind of dogged despair. On this one subject he was so sensitive that he found criticisms where none were intended. Blister was making excuses for him, he felt, was preparing a way of escape from his chicken-hearted weakness. And he did not want the failure palliated.
"What's the use of all that explainin', Blister?" he said bluntly. "Fact is, I got scared an' quit cold. Thought I was shot up when I wasn't even powder-burnt."
He turned on his heel and walked away.
Dud's white teeth showed in his friendly, affectionate grin. "Never did see such a fellow for backin' hisself into a corner an' allowin' that he's a plumb quitter. I'll bet, if the facts were known, he come through all right."
June decided to tell her story. "Yes, Dud. He must have seen Jake Houck with me, and when Jake--annoyed me--Bob jumped at him and hit him. Then Jake shot."
"Lucky he didn't shoot again after Bob was down," ventured Dud on a search for information.
In the darkness none of them could see the warm glow that swept across the cheeks of the girl. "I kinda got in his way--and told him he'd better hurry," she explained.
"Yes, but--Where did you meet Houck? How did he happen to be with you?" asked Larson. "To be on this side of town he must 'a' slipped through the guards."
"He never went to the river. I found him under the bed in my room a few minutes ago. Said he ran in there after he left the bank. He wanted me to get him a horse. I wouldn't. But I knew if he was found cornered he would kill somebody before he was taken. Maybe two or three. I didn't know. And of course he wouldn't 'a' let me leave the room alone anyhow. So I said I'd walk across the park with him and let him slip into the sage. I thought it would be better."
Dud nodded. "We'd better get the boys on his trail immediate."
They separated, with that end in view.
CHAPTER XLIV
BOB H
OLDS HIS RED HAID HIGH
At the corner of the street Bob came upon Tom Reeves and an old Leadville miner in argument. Tom made the high sign to Dillon.
"What's all the rumpus about?" he wanted to know.
"Jake Houck was seen crossin' the park. He got into the sage."
"Sho! I'll bet the hole of a doughnut he ain't been seen. If you was to ask me I'd say he was twenty-five miles from here right now, an' not lettin' no grass grow under his feet neither. I been talkin' to old wooden head here about the railroad comin' in." Tom's eyes twinkled. His friend guessed that he was trying to get a rise out of the old-timer. "He's sure some mossback. I been tellin' him the railroad's comin' through here an' Meeker right soon, but he can't see it. I reckon the toot of an engine would scare him 'most to death."
"Don't get excited about that railroad, son," drawled the former hard-rock driller, chewing his cud equably. "I rode a horse to death fifteen years ago to beat the choo-choo train in here, an' I notice it ain't arriv yet."
Bob left them to their argument. He was not just now in a mood for badinage. He moved up the street past the scattered suburbs of the little frontier town. Under the cool stars he wanted to think out what had just taken place.
Had he fainted from sheer fright when the gun blazed at him? Or was Blister's explanation a genuine one? He had read of men being thrown down and knocked senseless by the atmospheric shock of shells exploding near them in battle. But this would not come in that class. He had been actually struck. The belt buckle had been driven against his flesh. Had this hit him with force enough actually to drive the breath out of him? Or had he thought himself wounded and collapsed because of the thought?
It made a great deal of difference to him which of these was true, more than it did to the little world in which he moved. Some of the boys might guy him good-naturedly, but nobody was likely to take the matter seriously except himself. Bob had begun to learn that a man ought to be his own most severe critic. He had set out to cure himself of cowardice. He would not be easy in mind so long as he still suspected himself of showing the white feather.
He leaned on a fence and looked across the silvery sage to a grove of quaking asp beyond. How long he stood there, letting thoughts drift through his mind, he did not know. A sound startled him, the faint swish of something stirring. He turned.
Out of the night shadows a nymph seemed to be floating toward him. For a moment he had a sense of unreality, that the flow and rhythm of her movement were born of the imagination. But almost at once he knew that this was June in the flesh.
The moonlight haloed the girl, lent her the touch of magic that transformed her from a creature not too good for human nature's daily food into an ethereal daughter of romance. Her eyes were dark pools of loveliness in a white face.
"June!" he cried, excitement drumming in his blood.
Why had she come to find him? What impulse or purpose had brought her out into the night in his wake? Desire of her, tender, poignant, absorbing, pricked through him like an ache. He wanted her. Soul and body reached out to her, though both found expression only in that first cry.
Her mouth quivered. "Oh, Bob, you silly boy! As if--as if it matters why you were stunned. You were. That's enough. I'm so glad--so glad you're not hurt. It's 'most a miracle. He might have killed you."
She did not tell him that he would have done it if she had not flung her weight on his arm and dragged the weapon down, nor how in that dreadful moment her wits had worked to save him from the homicidal mania of the killer.
Bob's heart thumped against his ribs like a caged bird. Her dear concern was for him. It was so she construed friendship--to give herself generously without any mock modesty or prudery. She had come without thought of herself because her heart had sent her.
"What matters is that when I called you came," she went on. "You weren't afraid then, were you?"
"Hadn't time. That's why. I just jumped."
"Yes." The expression in her soft eyes was veiled, like autumn fires in the hills blazing through mists. "You just jumped to help me. You forgot he carried two forty-fives and would use them, didn't you?"
"Yes," he admitted. "I reckon if I'd thought of that--"
Even as the laughter rippled from her throat she gave a gesture of impatience. There were times when self-depreciation ceased to be a virtue. She remembered a confidence Blister had once made to her.
"T-Texas man," she squeaked, stuttering a little in mimicry, "throw up that red haid an' stick out yore chin."
Up jerked the head. Bob began to grin in spite of himself.
"Whose image are you m-made in?" she demanded.
"You know," he answered.
"What have you got over all the world?"
"Dominion, ma'am, but not over all of it, I reckon."
"All of it," she insisted, standing clean of line and straight as a boy soldier.
"Right smart of it," he compromised.
"Every teeny bit of it," she flung back.
"Have yore own way. I know you will anyhow," he conceded.
"An' what are you a little lower than?"
"I'm a heap lower than one angel I know."
She stamped her foot. "You're no such thing. You're as good as any one--and better."
"I wouldn't say better," he murmured ironically. None the less he was feeling quite cheerful again. He enjoyed being put through his catechism by her.
"Trouble with you is you're so meek," she stormed. "You let anybody run it over you till they go too far. What's the use of crying your own goods down? Tell the world you're Bob Dillon and for it to watch your dust."
"You want me to brag an' strut like Jake Houck?"
"No-o, not like that. But Blister's right. You've got to know your worth. When you're sure of it you don't have to tell other people about it. They know."
He considered this. "Tha's correct," he said.
"Well, then."
Bob had an inspiration. It was born out of moonshine, her urging, and the hunger of his heart. His spurs trailed across the grass.
"Is my red haid high enough now?" he asked, smiling.
Panic touched her pulse. "Yes, Bob."
"What have I got over all the world?" he quizzed.
"Dominion," she said obediently in a small voice.
"Over all of it?"
"I--don't--know."
His brown hands fastened on her shoulders. He waited till at last her eyes came up to meet his. "Every teeny bit of it."
"Have your own way," she replied, trying feebly to escape an emotional climax by repeating the words he had used. "I know you will anyhow."
He felt himself floating on a wave of audacious self-confidence. "Say it, then. Every teeny bit of it."
"Every teeny bit of it," she whispered.
"That means June Tolliver too." The look in his eyes flooded her with love.
"June Dillon," the girl corrected in a voice so soft and low he scarcely made out the words.
He caught her in his arms. "You precious lamb!"
They forgot the rest of the catechism. She nestled against his shoulder while they told each other in voiceless ways what has been in the hearts of lovers ever since the first ones walked in Eden.
CHAPTER XLV
THE OUTLAW GETS A BAD BREAK
Houck crawled through the barbed-wire fence and looked back into the park from which he had just fled. June was kneeling beside the man he had shot. Some one was running across the grass toward her. Soon the pursuit would be at his heels. He dared not lose a second.
He plunged into the sage, making for the hills which rose like a saw-toothed wall on the horizon. If he could reach them he might find there a precarious safety. Some wooded pocket would give him shelter until the pursuit had swept past. He was hungry, but if he must he could do without food for a day.
The bandit was filled with a furious, impotent rage at the way fortune had tricked him. Thirty-five miles from Bear Cat, well back from the river, three horses were waiting for him a
nd his dead companions in a draw. Unless somebody found them they would wait a long time. The way that led to them was barred for him. He would have to try to reach Glenwood or Rifle. From there he could perhaps catch a freight east or west. His one chance was to get clear out of the country. After this day's work it would be too small to hold him.