by Max Brand
He went on, but no sooner was he around the next hill-shoulder than he turned aside, and slid Fiddle down the slope to the bottom of the ravine.
Two hours would have made about the time that the fugitive from the Fitzgerald robbery would have been riding up this cañon if, as Destry suspected, he had been making for the railroad line; and he was willing to wager a fair sum that the rider of the pinto was the man the sheriff wanted. Therefore, in the name of the law and his new office, Destry sent Fiddle scampering up the old trail.
She went as a deer goes, lightly, gracefully, never fighting the steep places as most horses will do, never getting into a sweat of anxiety over sharp drops in the way, but studying out everything in detail and going nimbly about the solution in her own way. She was one of those rare animals that accept the purpose of the rider and then bend themselves intelligently to fulfill it, without starting and plunging at every unexpected obstacle along the way.
He helped her, too, in that perfect partnership. Often the old trail jumped up the almost sheer face of a rock, and then Destry leaped to the ground and worked his own way up, without giving her the pull of that extra burden. Or again, where it plunged sheer down, he was once more running beside her, and leaping into the saddle only where the ground became more favorable.
So they went on swiftly—an amazing speed, considering the nature of the way. But Fiddle could leap little gullies through which most cowponies would have to jog, staggering down one bank and laboring up the other. And she seemed to know, with that extra instinct which seems like eyes in the foot, exactly which stone would bear her weight, and which would roll and make her stumble.
However, no matter what speed they were making, Destry did not push her too hard, for he realized that a stern chase is a long one, and that the pinto had two hours’ start on him. He worked rather to come up with the leader by the dusk of the day than to overtake him with one sustained effort.
So he checked Fiddle, rather than urged her forward.
It was bitterly hot in the ravine. Even when the sun made sufficient westing to fill the ravine with shadow, the heat which the rocks had been drinking all the day they now seemed to give up with one incredible outpouring of locked up energy. No wind could find its way down into the heart of the cañon; the air was close and dead. The mare was cloaked with dripping sweat that rubbed to foam where the reins chafed the sleek of her neck and shoulders. Destry himself was drenched, but he regarded his own comfort less than that of the mare. Four times he stopped to slush water over her, and four times she went on, refreshed, while the pass darkened, and the sky overhead began to grow brilliant with the sunset.
Then Destry called on her for the first time, and she responded with a gallant burst up the long last rise to the summit of the trail. That long mile she put swiftly behind her, and, as he came to the top of the rise, Destry saw before him a sea of broken ground on which the dim trail tossed like the wake of a ship on a choppy sea, swinging this side and that.
But all that he could see of the trail was empty; then something loomed against the skyline—a pinto, surely——
No, it was only a hereford!
But a moment later, as he was digesting this first disappointment, he saw a broad sombrero with a lofty crown grow up against the sky, and a rider beneath it, sitting tall and straight in the saddle, and finally a pinto mustang; all three were only two swales away from him; and, seeing the pinto stumble with weariness, and sag as a tired horse will do, he knew that man, whoever he might be, was within striking distance!
Chapter Twenty-two
A wind blew across that height and cut against the face of Destry, whipping the dust from his lungs, the weariness from his heart. Across the rise and fall of the hills, he saw the dirty smudge which was the desert atmosphere; behind him the mountains rose up, splitting apart at the pass through which he had just ridden. He gave it one glance, and then made up his mind. The wind came from the left; it was to the right that he sent Fiddle, down into the hollows, so that the wind’s own voice might help to stifle the sound of her hoofbeats. Cat claws tore at them as they whipped through, and the mesquite rose up around them like a dusky mist, rolling back on either hand, as he kept Fiddle at full gallop for two miles at least, jockeying her forward with his weight shifted toward the withers.
Then he pulled her up onto the trail, the old trail in the red of the sunset, and, leaping down, threw the reins. She was breathing hard, but cleanly.
He hurried to the crest of the swale before him, and, glancing cautiously over, he saw the pinto and its rider jogging through the hollow beneath, straight into his hands.
He looked back over his shoulder. Fiddle already was cropping grass at the side of the road, and far off he saw a slowly moving cloud of smoke in the lowlands. It might have been dust raised by a whirlwind, but it leaned back too far for that, and he knew it was a train. From this same rise the fugitive—if fugitive he were—would sight his open door to flight.
The thought pleased Destry and all the iron in his heart!
He crouched in a nest of stones and waited. He stayed there until he saw the sombrero grow up on the other side of the rise, then the nodding head of the mustang—and the face of the rider.
It was Lefty Turnbull! It was Lefty, who, during the trial six years before, of all the twelve jurors, alone had sat from first to last with a fixed sneer of hostility on his lips.
It seemed to the startled and vengeful eyes of Destry that the same smile was now on the lips of this man, and it transported Destry back to the courtroom, to the spiderweb in the corner of the ceiling, to the slant shaft of the sunlight that streamed through the window, to the barking voice of the district attorney— and again to this sneering smile of Turnbull!
Or was it merely weariness, the grin of long labor, which will make men seem to smile?
“Hey—!” cried out Lefty softly, and reined in his horse as he saw the mare before him.
“Fill your hand, Lefty,” cried Destry, from the side. “Fill your hand.” Then, remembering on what commission he rode, he added loudly: “In the name of the law!”
There was an old saying among those who knew that there was enough of the cat in Lefty Turnbull to land him on his feet from any height. Or, hold him by hands and feet a foot from the floor, like a cat he would land on all fours when dropped. Moreover, he was an old and experienced fighter, polished by a trip to the Klondike, and hardened by a few winters in the Canada woods.
To all that was said of him he lived up now.
For at the sound of Destry’s voice, instead of drawing a gun and shooting to the side from which the threat came, Lefty flung himself out of the saddle, and, as he dropped past the belly line of the pinto, he was shooting.
The first bullet might well have ended the fight, for it struck a boulder inches from Destry’s head and cast a burning spray of rock splinters into his face. Had they volleyed into his eyes, that would have proved the finish! But luck saved him. His own first shot went wide to the right. He knew he had pulled it even as he compressed the trigger.
The second would split the forehead of Turnbull as a knife splits the brittle rind of a squash, yet there was somewhere a hundredth part of a second which Destry could devote to thought, and in that whiplash instant he remembered his word to the sheriff.
He was not his own man, now; he was the servant of the law and, being that, as Harry Destry he did not exist, nor were the quarrels and the feuds of that man of any importance to him. He was not even sure that this was the criminal for whom he had been sent!
So he turned his aim a little to the right, and literally saw the impact of the big slug jerk at the body of Turnbull. The Colt exploded in Lefty’s hand; but dropped as it was fired, and rattled down the face of a rock.
Still, disarmed as he was, there was no thought of surrender in the man. He was lying sprawled on the ground, in the perfect position for accurate shooting, when the bullet of Destry plunged through his left shoulder and ruined his shooting
hand. Yet he lurched up now to his feet and ran forward to scoop up the weapon with his other hand.
Never was there such fiercely sweet temptation in Destry’s soul as when he saw the full target arise before him. The buttons of the coat seemed to glimmer like stars, inviting the attention of the marksman, and the broad forehead seemed unmissable.
Yet he did not fire!
He belonged to the law. He was only a tool in the hands of the sheriff, and bitterly he told himself that Ding Slater well knew the identity of the criminal, and had despatched Destry merely to torment him.
“I ain’t doin’ murder today,” said Destry. “Leave your gun be!”
Lefty Turnbull hesitated, his right hand reaching for the weapon. He was, like most left-handed people, quite hopeless on the other side. He knew that he had no ghost of a chance to manage the Colt successfully under the very nose of Destry’s gun, but still the fighting fury ruled him for a breathing space. Then it passed and left him cold, very cold— trembling with the chill of realization that had struck through his mind.
He stood up, his empty hands dangling uselessly at his sides, his gaunt face as fixed as stone.
“It ain’t murder,” he said with perfect self-control. “It’s your right. But tell ’em, when the time comes for the talkin’, that I didn’t go at you two for one, like the Ogdens, and that I didn’t run, like Wendell, nor play the sneak, like Clyde Orrin, nor come at you in the dark, like Sam Warren. Do me right, Harry. Now turn loose and be damned to you!”
“If you was to of been told by me, you wouldn’t of said more that I’d like to say myself,” declared Destry. “But I ain’t playin’ my own game, or you’d be lookin’ at the sky now, old son, and not seein’ the pretty sunset Stand still. I’m gunna have to tie up that—did it nick you deep?”
“Through the shoulder—that’s all,” said Lefty.
“Lemme see.”
Lefty sat on a rock, while his conqueror, in the ruddy but uncertain light of the sunset, sliced away the sleeve of his coat and examined the wound.
“It went clean through,” said he. “Feel as though the bone was smashed, Lefty?”
“There ain’t no feelin’.”
“Try this!”
He grasped the dangling arm and slowly worked it around, listening closely for the grinding of the broken edges of bone, while Lefty cursed steadily through his teeth, but endured.
“The bone’s safe,” said Destry. “I’m glad of that. I’ll save you whole and sound for——”
He stopped the sentence in its midst.
“For the next time?” completed Lefty. “I’m ready for you any day or time, young feller. I would of got you plenty today, only you had the break of takin’ me unexpected from the side. Which I don’t mind telling you that I nigh dusted you that time, Harry!”
The familiar sneer of ferocity and contempt was on his face as he spoke.
“You talk fine; you talk like a teacher,” said Destry. “Now shut up while I work on you.”
With dust he clotted the blood; with strips of his own under and outer shirt, he bound up the wound and fastened the arm tight, from shoulder to elbow, against the side of his victim. All of this, Lefty endured in perfect silence, though the sweat dripped steadily from his chin.
It was utterly dark when the last knot was tied.
“Now,” said Destry, “you ornery, low-lifed son of mis’ry, did you rob the Fitzgerald store?”
“Are you doin’ errand boy work for the sheriff?”
“Which I ask you a question, which you ask me another. Does that make sense?”
“They’s a wallet in my coat,” said the prisoner. “You can look in that.”
“They is striped skunks and spotted polecats,” said Destry, “and you’re both if you think that I handle another gent’s private wallet.”
“The mail—that’s different, eh?”
“You fool,” said Destry, “if you’d had a right to run me up, d’you think that I’d ever be here on your trail this minute? D’you think I cant take my medicine as well as the next man? I ask you again: Did you grab the coin from Fitzgerald’s store?”
“Suppose I did?”
“Then why didn’t you clean out the till?”
“That’s my business. I needed some change. I didn’t want to harm Fitzgerald none. He’s white.”
“You lie!” persisted Destry. “You wanted a couple hundred so bad that it looked to you like a million. You grabbed what you needed and the rest didn’t matter. You wasn’t thinkin’ about Fitzgerald, but about your own hide!”
“Go on,” said the other. “You act like you know!”
“You was sneakin’ out of town,” said Destry quietly, “because you’d heard about Sam Warren’s bad luck, and about me headin’ back for Wham. And when you heard that, you figgered on the railroad. You were scared out of Wham, son, and it was me that scared you!”
“That’s the grandpa of all lies I ever heard!”
“Lefty, it’s the straight! By the look of the case I knew that him that grabbed that money was pretty much on the wing; I figgered that the railroad was where he was headin’ for, with enough money to see him out. He only stopped at Fitzgerald’s for a ticket, as you might say, and havin’ that, he breezed along. Look me in the eye, Lefty, and—”
But though the darkness might have helped Lefty, for some reason he was unable to raise his head, which had fallen on his chest.
“A peer!” said Destry bitterly. “One of the twelve peers! Peer of a gray cat and a yaller hound! I was aimin’ to be sorry for you, Lefty, and I was aimin’ to figger a way to keep you out of jail, but there’s where you b’long, and there’s where I’m takin’ you! Half of ’em are off the list. But it’s still six to one, and I’ve an idea that the rest of ’em are gunna play their hand together, and close to the chest!”
Chapter Twenty-three
Slowly they worked back through the mountains. The way was long, and the wounded man had to have rest and sleep and food. Destry was guard, nurse, and cook for his companion, and silent in all three occupations; and sometimes as Lefty Turnbull lay in the shade, setting his teeth against the pain in his wound, he would feel a slight chill run through him, and then he dared not glance at Destry, for he knew that the latter would be watching him with cold, ominous eyes which it had grown impossible for Lefty to meet.
Savage hate, contempt, bitter disappointment were the iron in the heart of Destry now; and once Lefty strove to banter with him on the subject.
“Now, look here!” he said to his captor. “There’s only two dead. There’s Wendell scared stiff and driven away from home; there’s Jud Ogden cripple, hut livin’; there’s Clyde Orrin shamed in front of everybody, but livin’ too. Why should you pick me out for a killin’, Harry? Why should it bust your heart that I’m gunna be sent up to the pen for a dozen years, maybe? Ain’t that enough?”
“Why, man,” said Destry, “they’s some folks that I’d hate to send behind the bars for a dozen days—if I could pick the dozen! But one like you—you’ll be at home up yonder. They make trusties out of your kind of a man, and set ’em to spyin’ and playin’ stool-pidgeon. You might even get promoted to shine the warden’s boots, or play catch with his little boy. Prison ain’t gunna mean much to you, but the sheriff’s tied my hands, and I’ve had to do his dirty work and leave my own work slip by!”
After that, Lefty did not pursue the subject for most obvious reasons, and so they worked gradually on their way, avoiding all traveled trails, until in the dusk of the next day they came out from the woods upon the shoulder of the mountain overhanging Wham.
There was still light to blink rosily on the windows toward the west, and to show the coiling arms of dust which enwrapped the town; to show also the trailing smoke that traveled up the opposite slopes towards the mines of the Crystal Range.
“You don’t look happy,” suggested Lefty, staring aside at his companion.
And Destry said gloomily: “They’ve got toge
ther by this time. They scattered when they heard of me comin’ back; they joined again when they heard I was tame; they ran again when they seen I wasn’t so safe. And now that I’ve worked down a few of ’em, they’ll gather once more!”
“And you’re scared, Harry?” asked the other, very curiously, as though he really felt that this was an emotion about which Destry could know nothing.
“Scared to death, pretty near,” replied Destry sourly. “Who wouldn’t be? What’s the old yarn about the six sticks in one bundle, and apart? They’re down there plannin’ and workin’ together. Six rats, cornered, back up agin the wall, poison as rattlesnakes, they’re hatin’ me so hard! And him— the one that’s leadin’—he’s the one that I’d like to find!”
“What one?” asked Lefty.
“Him that runs the party for the rest of you!” said Destry fiercely. “Who sent Jose Vedres with the letter to Orrin? That’s what I wanta know! Lefty, if you’ll tell me that, maybe I’ll be able to wangle you away from the sheriff. I promised to turn you in to him as deputy. What hinders me tearin’ the badge off right after and takin’ you away agin?”
“For the name of who?” shouted Lefty, irritated by this hope, dangled under his nose. “Who is it?”
“You don’t know?” asked Destry, more curious than before “Does he work in the dark even with you? No wonder that I can’t find him out! I tell you, old son, that the thought of him scares me more and more. It wasn’t either of the Ogdens, or Orrin, or Wendell, or you, or Warren. Who’s left? There’s little Clifton. Looks like his forehead is too narrow to hold such ideas. There’s Henry Cleeves that knows more about machinery than men. Bud Williams would be fine if it was only fightin’ with his hands that he had to do, and Bud Truckman and Bull Hewitt are both too slow to think twice standin’ in the same place. They’s Phil Barker left of the lot. It might be that they’s somethin’ more than his jokes about him, but I ain’t so sure. Lefty, if I could lean on you for that information, I’d sure pay you back! I’d wipe out the score agin you, and be in your debt for the bullet that snagged you! Who’s him that stands behind the show and tells the others what to do? I gotta get him, or I’ve got nothin’.”