The Fighting Edge

by Raine, William MacLeod

  “Fools, the pair of ’em. If that bank teller hadn’t grabbed for his gun we’d ’a’ got away with it fine.”

  She looked at him with disgust, not untouched with self-scorn because she had ever let him become an overpowering influence in her life. He could no more help boasting than he could breathing.

  “As it is, you’ve reached the end of your rope,” the girl said steadily.

  “Don’t you think I’m at the end of a rope. I’m a long ways from there.”

  “And the men with you are gone.”

  “How gone? Did they get ’em?”

  “Neither of them ever moved out of his tracks.”

  “When I heard the shootin’ I figured it would be thataway,” Houck said callously.

  She could see in him no evidence whatever of regret or remorse for what he had done. This raid, she guessed, was of his planning. He had brought the others into it, and they had paid the penalty of their folly. The responsibility for their deaths lay at his door. He was not apparently giving a thought to that.

  “You can’t stay here,” she told him coldly. “You’ll have to go.”

  “Go where? Can you get me a horse?”

  “I won’t,” June answered.

  “I got to have a horse, girl,” he wheedled. “Can’t travel without one.”

  “I don’t care how far you travel or what becomes of you. I want you out of here. That’s all.”

  “You wouldn’t want me shootin’ up some o’ yore friends, would you? Well, then. If they find me here there’ll be some funerals in Bear Cat. You can bet heavy on that.”

  She spoke more confidently than she felt. “They can take care of themselves. I won’t have you here. I’ll not protect you.”

  The outlaw’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Throw me down, would you? Tell ’em I’m here, mebbe?” His face was a menace, his voice a snarl.

  June looked at him steadily, unafraid. “You needn’t try to bully me. It’s not worth wasting your time.”

  To look at her was to know the truth of what she said, but he could not help trying to dominate the girl, both because it was his nature and because he needed so badly her help.

  “Sho! You’re not so goshalmighty. You’re jes’ June Tolliver. I’m the same Jake Houck you once promised to marry. Don’t forget that, girl. I took you from that white-livered fellow you married—”

  “Who saved you from the Utes when nobody else would lift a finger for you. That comes well from you of all men,” she flung out.

  “That ain’t the point. What I’m sayin’ is that I’ll not stand for you throwin’ me down.”

  “What can you do?” She stood before him in her stockings, the heavy black hair waving down to her hips, a slim girl whose wiry strength he could crush with one hand.

  Her question stopped him. What could he do if she wanted to give him up? If he made a move toward her she would scream, and that would bring his enemies upon him. He could shoot her afterward, but that would do no good. His account was heavy enough as it stood without piling up surplusage.

  “You aimin’ for to sell me out?” he asked hoarsely.

  “No. I won’t be responsible for your death.” June might have added another reason, a more potent one. She knew Jake Houck, what a game and desperate villain he was. They could not capture him alive. It was not likely he could be killed without one or two men at least being shot by him. Driven into a corner, he would fight like a wild wolf.

  “Tha’s the way to talk, June. Help me outa this hole. You can if you’re a mind to. Have they got patrols out everywhere?”

  “Only on the river side of the town. They think you escaped that way.”

  “Well, if you’ll get me a horse—”

  “I’ll not do it.” She reflected a moment, thinking out the situation. “If you can reach the foothills you’ll have a chance.”

  He grinned, wolfishly. “I’ll reach ’em. You can gamble on that, if I have to drop a coupla guys like I did this mornin’.”

  That was just the trouble. If any one interfered with him, or even recognized him, he would shoot instantly. He would be a deadly menace until he was out of Bear Cat.

  “I’ll go with you,” June said impulsively.

  “Go with me?” he repeated.

  “Across the park. If they see me with you, nobody’ll pay any attention to you. Pull your hat down over your eyes.”

  He did as she told him.

  “Better leave your guns here. If anyone sees them—”

  “Nothin’ doing. My guns go right with me. What are you trying to pull off?” He shot a lowering, suspicious look at her.

  “Keep them under your coat, then. We don’t want folks looking at us too curiously. We’ll stroll along as if we were interested in our talk. When we meet any one, if we do, you can look down at me. That’ll hide your face.”

  “You going with me clear to the edge of town?”

  “No. Just across the square, where it’s light an’ there are liable to be people. You’ll have to look out for yourself after that. It’s not more than two hundred yards to the sagebrush.”

  “I’m ready whenever you are,” he said.

  June put on her shoes and did up her hair.

  She made him wait there while she scouted to make sure nobody was in the corridor outside the room.

  They passed out of the back door of the hotel.

  Chung met them. He grunted “Glood-eveling” with a grin at June, but he did not glance twice at her companion.

  The two passed across a vacant lot and into the park. They saw one or two people—a woman with a basket of eggs, a barefoot boy returning home from after-supper play. June carried the burden of the talk because she was quicker-witted than Houck. Its purpose was to deceive anybody who might happen to be looking at them.

  It chanced that some one was looking at them. He was a young man who had been lying on the grass stargazing. They passed close to him and he recognized June by her walk. That was not what brought him to his feet a moment later with a gasp of amazement. He had recognized her companion, too, or he thought he had. It was not credible, of course. He must be mistaken. And yet—if that was not Jake Houck’s straddling slouch his eyes were playing tricks. The fellow limped, too, just a trifle, as he had heard the Brown’s Park man did from the effects of his wounds in the Ute campaign.

  But how could Houck be with June, strolling across the park in intimate talk with her, leaning toward her in that confidential, lover-like attitude—Jake Houck, who had robbed the bank a few hours earlier and was being hunted up and down the river by armed posses ready to shoot him like a wolf? June was a good hater. She had no use whatever for this fellow. Why, then, would she be with him, laughing lightly and talking with animation?

  Bob followed them, as noiselessly as possible. And momentarily the conviction grew in him that this was Houck. It was puzzling, but he could not escape the conclusion. There was a trick in the fellow’s stride, a peculiarity of the swinging shoulders that made for identification of the man.

  If he could have heard the talk between them, Bob would have better understood the situation.

  Ever since that memorable evening when Bear Cat had driven him away in disgrace, Houck had let loose the worse impulses of his nature. He had gone bad, to use the phrase of the West. Something in him had snapped that hitherto had made him value the opinions of men. In the old days he had been a rustler and worse, but no crime had ever been proved against him. He could hold his head up, and he did. But the shock to his pride and self-esteem that night had produced in him a species of disintegration. He had drunk heavily and almost constantly. It had been during the sour temper following such a bout that he had quarreled with and shot the Ute. From that hour his declension had been swift. How far he had gone was shown by the way he had taken Dillon’s great service to him. The thing rankled in his mind, filled him with surging rage whenever he thought of it. He hated the young fellow more than ever.

  But as he walked with June, slende
r, light-swinging, warm with young, sensuous life, the sultry passion of the man mounted to his brain and overpowered caution. His vanity whispered to him. No woman saved a man from death unless she loved him. She might give other reasons, but that one only counted. It was easy for him to persuade himself that she always had been fond of him at heart. There had been moments when the quality of her opposition to him had taken on the color of adventure.

  “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 t
his 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 HOLDS 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?