by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER IV
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE OAK
Jack sat looking after the crowd that shuffled through the doorwayinto the sunlight. He thought he had believed that he would receivethe sentence which the juryman had spoken so baldly; yet, after thewords had been actually spoken, he stared blankly after Bill and theothers, and incredulously at the Captain, who seated himself upon abunk opposite to watch his prisoner, his pistol resting suggestivelyupon his knee. The boy lingered to shake Jack's unresponsive hand andmutter a broken sentence or two of gratitude and sympathy. But Jackscarcely grasped his meaning, and his answer sounded chillingly calm;so that the boy, wincing under the cold stare of the Captain and theseeming indifference of the prisoner, turned away with downy china-tremble and in his eyes the look of horrified awe which sometimescomes to a youth who has seen death hesitate just over his head, passhim by, and choose another. In the doorway he stopped and looked backbewildered. Jack had said that he loved life and would hate to leaveit; and yet he sat there calmly, scraping idly with his boot-toe alittle furrow in the loose sand, his elbows resting on his knees, hisface unlined by frown or bitterness, his eyes bent abstractedly uponthe shallow trench he was desultorily digging. He did not look as theboy believed a man should look who has just been condemned to die theignominious death of hanging. The boy shuddered and went out intothe sunlight, dazed with this glimpse he had got of the inexorablehardness of life.
Jack did not even know when the boy left. He, also, was looking uponthe hardness of life, but he was looking with the eyes of the fighter.So long as Jack Allen had breath in his body, he would fight to keepit there. His incredulity against the verdict swung to a tenaciousdisbelief that it would really come to the worst. So long as hewas alive, so long as he could feel the weight of the dagger in hissleeve, it was temperamentally impossible for him to believe that hewas going to die that day.
Plans he made and smoothed them in the dirt with his toe. If they didnot bind his arms... They had not tied Sandy's arms, he remembered;and he wondered if a dagger concealed in Sandy's sleeve would havemade any essential difference in the result of that particular crimeof the Committee. He sickened at a vivid memory of how Sandy hadridden away, just a week or so before; and of the appealing glancewhich he had sent toward Bill's place when Shorty started to lead thebuckskin from before the prison tent with six men walking upon eitherside and a curious crowd straggling after. Would a dagger in Sandy'ssleeve have made any difference?
Then his thoughts swung to the Mexican who had told him of the trick,only the night before. It had amused Jack to experiment with his ownknife; and the very novelty of the thing had impelled him to slip hisdagger into the new hiding-place that morning when he dressed. TheCaptain had not discovered it there--but would it make any difference?It occurred to him that he need not die the death of dangling andstrangling at the end of the rope, at any rate; if it came to dying...Jack became acutely conscious of the steady beat in his chest, andimmediately afterward felt the same throb in his throat; he could stopthat beating whenever he chose, if they did not bind his arms.
"Horse's ready, Captain," announced Shorty succinctly, thrusting hishead through the closed flaps; and the Captain rose instantly and madea commanding gesture to his prisoner.
Jack swept the loose dirt back into the furrow with one swing of hisfoot and stood up. He went out quietly, two steps in advance of theCaptain and the Captain's drawn pistol, and advanced unflinchinglytowards the horse that stood saddled in the midst of the group ofexecutioners, with the same curious crowd looking on greedily at thespectacle.
"Ever been on a horse?" asked the Captain, his deep voice little morethan a growl.
"Once or twice," Jack answered indifferently.
"Climb on, then!"
Jack was young and he was very human. It might be his last hour onearth, but there rose up in him a prideful desire to show them whetherhe had ever been on a horse; he caught the saddle-horn with one handand vaulted vaingloriously into the saddle without touching a toe tothe stirrup. The buckskin ducked and danced sidewise at the end of therope in Shorty's hand, and more than one gun flashed into sight at theunexpectedness of the move.
The Captain scowled at the exclamations of admiration from the crowd."You needn't try any funny work, young man, or I'll tie you hand aswell as foot!" he threatened sternly. "Give me that rope, Davis."
Then Jack paid in pain for his vanity, and paid in full. The Captaindid not bind his arms--perhaps because of the crowd and a desire toseem merciful. But though he merely tied the prisoner's ankle afterthe usual manner, he knotted the small rope with a vicious yank,pulled it as tight as he could and passed the rope under the flinchingbelly of the buckskin to Davis, on the other side. Also he sent aglance of meaning which the other read unerringly and obeyed mostwillingly. Davis drew the rope taut under the cinch and tied Jack'sother ankle as if he were putting the diamond hitch on a pack mule.The two stepped back and eyed him sharply for some sign of pain, whenall was done.
"Thanks," drawled Jack. "Sorry I can't do as much for you." Whereuponhe set his teeth against the growing agony of strained muscles andcongesting arteries, and began to roll a cigarette with fingers whichhe held rigidly from trembling.
Bill Wilson, returning gloomily to the doorway of his place, grated anoath and turned away his head.
Some day, he promised himself vengefully, those two--yes, and thewhole group of murderers moving briskly away from the tent--would payfor that outrage; and he prayed that the day might come soon.
He went heavily into the big room where men were already foregatheringto gossip between drinks of the trial and of the man who was to die.Bill bethought him of the young stranger; made some inquiries ofcertain inoffensive individuals among the crowd, and sent Jim out withinstructions to find the kid and bring him back with him.
Bill was standing in the door waiting for Jim to return, when, in aswirl of dust, came Dade galloping around a corner and to thevery doorstep before he showed any desire to slow up. At the firsttightening of the reins, the white horse stiffened his front legs, dugtwo foot-long furrows and stopped still. Bill had no enthusiasm forthe perfect accomplishment of the trick. He stood with his handsthrust deep into his pockets and regarded the rider glumly.
"Well, you got here," he grunted, with the brevity of utter misery.
"You bet I did! I was away from the hacienda when the peon came, orI'd have got here sooner," Dade explained cheerfully, swinging to theground with a jingle of his big, Mexican spurs that had little silverbells to swell the tinkly chimes when he moved. "Where's Jack?"
Big Bill Wilson's jaw trembled with an impulse towards tears whichthe long, harsh years behind him would not let him shed. "They've gothim," he said in a choked tone, and waved a hand toward the west.
"Who's got him?" Dade clanked a step closer and peered sharply intoBill's face, with all the easy good humor wiped out of his own.
"The Committee. You're too late; they're taking him out to the oak.Been gone about ten minutes. They had it in for him, and--I couldn'tdo a thing! The men in this town--" Epithets rushed incoherently fromBill's lips, just as violent weeping marks the reaction from a woman'sfirst silence in the face of tragedy.
Dade did not hear a word he was saying, after those first jerkysentences. He stood looking past Bill at a drunken Irishman who wasmaking erratic progress up the street; and he was no more conscious ofthe Irishman than he was of Bill's scorching condemnation of the townwhich could permit such outrages.
"Watch Surry a minute!" he said abruptly, and hurried into thegambling hall. In a minute he was back again and lifting foot to thestirrup.
"How long did you say they've been gone?" he asked, without looking atBill.
"Ten or fifteen minutes. Say, you can't do anything!"
Dade was already half-way up the block, a swirl of sand-dust markinghis flight. Bill stared after him distressfully.
"He'll go and get his light put out--and he won't help Jack a damnbit," he told himself miserabl
y, and went in. Life that day lookedvery hard to big-hearted Bill Wilson, and scarcely worth the troubleof living it.
It broke the heart of Dade Hunter to see how near the sinisterprocession was to the live oak that had come to be looked upon as thegallows of the Vigilance Committee; a gallows whose broad branchessheltered from rain and sun alike the unmarked graves of the menwho had come there shuddering and looked upon it, and shuddering hadlooked no more upon anything in this world.
Until he was near enough to risk betraying his haste by the hoof-beatsof his horse, Dade kept Surry at a run. Upon the crest of the slopewhich the procession was leisurely descending, he slowed to a lope;and so overtook the crowd that straggled always out to the hangings,came they ever so frequent. Reeling in the saddle, he came up withthe stragglers, singing and marking time with a half-empty bottle ofwhisky.
The few who knew him looked at one another askance.
"Say, Hunter, ain't yuh got any feelin's? That there's your pardner onthe hoss," one loose-jointed miner expostulated.
"Sure, I got feelin's! Have a d-drink?" Dade leered drunkenly at thespeaker. "Jack's--no good anyway. Tol' 'im he'd get hung if he--have ad-drink?"
The loose-jointed one would, and so would his neighbors. The Captainglanced back at them, gave a contemptuous lift to his upper lip andfaced again to the front.
Dade uncoiled his riata with aimless, fumbling fingers and swung thenoose facetiously toward the bottle, uptilted over the eager mouth ofa weazened little Irishman. He caught bottle and hand together, letthem go with a quick flip of the rawhide and waggled his head inapology.
"_Excuse_ me, Mike," he mumbled, while the Irishman stopped andglared. "Go awn! Have a drink. Mighta spilled it--shame!"
Jack looked back, his heart thumping heavily at sound of the voice,thick though it was and maudlin. Dade drunk and full of coarse foolerywas a sight he had never before looked upon; but Dade's presence,drunk or sober, made his own plight seem a shade less hopeless. He didnot dare a second glance, with Davis and the Captain walking at eitherstirrup; but he listened anxiously--listened and caught a drunkenmumble from the rear, and a chorus of chuckling laughs coming after.
He looked ahead. The great oak was close, so close that he might havecounted the narrow little ridges of red soil beneath; the ridges whichhe knew were the graves of those who had died before him. The greatbough that reached out over the spot where the earth was trampledsmooth in horrible significance--the branch from which a noosedrope dangled sinuously in the breeze that came straight off theocean--swayed with majestic deliberation as if Fate herself werebeckoning.
He clasped his hands upon the saddle-horn and, stealthily looseningthe dagger-point from the hem of his sleeve, slid the weaponcautiously into his hand. When he felt the handle against his palm,he knew that he had been holding his breath, and that the sigh he gavewas an involuntary relief that the others had not glimpsed the bladeunder his clasped fingers. He would not have to dangle from thatswinging rope, at any rate.
"Hello, pard!" Dade's voice called thickly from close behind. "Lookingfor some rope?"
Jack turned his head just as the looped rawhide slithered past him andsettled taut over the head of the startled buckskin. Like a lightninggleam slashing through the dark he saw Dade's plan, and played his ownpart unhesitatingly.
Two movements he made while the buckskin sat back upon his haunchesand gathered his muscles for a forward spring. The first was to leanand send a downward sweep of the dagger across the rope by whichShorty was leading the horse, and the second was a backward lunge thatdrove the knife deep into the bared throat of the Captain, stunnedinto momentary inaction by the suddenness of Dade's assault.
The buckskin gave a mighty leap that caught Shorty unawares andsent him into a crumpled heap in the sand. Dade's riata, tight as afiddle-string at first, slackened as the buckskin, his breath comingin snorts, surged alongside. Jack leaned again--this time to snatchthe ivory-handled revolver from the holster on Dade's saddle. As wellas he could with his legs held rigid by the rope that tied his ankles,he twisted in the saddle and sent leaden answer to the spitefulbarking of the guns that called upon them to halt.
He twisted in the saddle and sent leaden answer to thespiteful barking of the guns.]
Davis he shot, and saw him sway and fall flat, with a smoking gun inhis hand. Another crumpled forward; and Shorty, just getting painfullyupon his feet, he sent into the sand again to stay; for his skill withsmall arms was something uncanny to witness, and his temper was up andturning him into a savage like the rest.
But the range was rapidly growing to rifle-length, and death fellshort of his enemies after Shorty went down. When he saw his fourthbullet kick up a harmless little geyser of sand two rods in advance ofthe agitated crowd, he left off and turned to his friend.
"I thought you were drunk," he observed inanely, as is common to menwho have just come through situations for which no words have beencoined.
"You ain't the only one who made that mistake," Dade retorted grimly,and looked back. "Good thing those hombres are afoot. We'll get on alittle farther and then we'll fix a hackamore so you can do your ownriding,"
"I can't stand it to ride any farther--"
"Are you shot?" Dade pulled in a little and looked anxiously into hisface.
"It's the rope. They tied it so tight it's torture. I'd never havebelieved it could hurt so--but they gave me an extra twist or two toshow their friendship, I reckon."
Dade rode on beyond a little, wooded knoll before he stopped, lestthe crowd, seeing them halt, might think it worth while to follow themafoot.
"They surely didn't intend you to fall off," he said whimsically, whenhis knife released the strain. But his lips tightened at the outrage;and his eyes, bent upon Jack's left ankle, wore the look of one whocould kill without pity.
"They'll never do it to another man," declared Jack, with vindictiverelish. "It was Davis and the Captain; I killed 'em both." He rolledstiffly from the saddle, found his feet like dead things and stumbledto a little hillock, where he sat down.
Dade, kneeling awkwardly in his heavy, bearskin chaparejos, picked atthe bonds with the point of his knife. "Lucky you had on boots," heremarked. "Even as it is, you're likely to carry creases for a while.How the deuce did you manage to get into this particular scrape?--if Imight ask!"
"I didn't get into it. This particular scrape got me. Say, it's luckyyou happened along just when you did."
To this very obvious statement the other made no reply. He cut thelast strand of the rope that bound Jack's ankles so mercilessly, andstood up. "You better take off your boots and rub some feeling intoyour feet while I make a hackamore for that horse. The sooner we getout of this, the better. What's left of the Committee will probably bepretty anxious to see you."
"Oh, damn the Committee!--as Bill remarked after the trial." Jack madean attempt to remove one of his boots, found the pain intolerable anddesisted with a groan. "I wish they would show up," he declared. "I'dlike to give them a taste of this foot-tying business!"
Dade went on tying the hackamore with a haste that might be calledanxious. With just two bullets left in the pistol and with no powderupon his person for further reloading, he could not share Jack'seagerness to meet the Committee again. When Surry gave over rollingwith his tongue the little wheel in his bit, and with lifted headand eyes alert perked his ears forward towards the hill they had justcrossed, he slipped the hackamore hurriedly into place and turned tohis friend.
"You climb on to Surry, and we'll pull out," he said shortly. "Iwouldn't give two pesos for this buckskin, but we're going to addhorse-stealing to our other crimes; and while it's all right to damnthe Committee, it's just as well to do it at a distance, just now, oldman."
The caution fell flat, for Jack was wholly absorbed by the pain inhis feet and ankles, as the blood was being forced into the congestedveins. Dade led the white horse close, to save him the discomfortof hobbling to it, and waited until Jack was in the saddle beforehe vaulted upon the t
ricky-eyed buckskin. He led the way down into ashallow depression which wound aimlessly towards the ocean; and later,when trees and bushes and precipitous bluffs threatened to bar theirway, he swung abruptly to the east and south.
"Maybe you won't object so hard to Palo Alto now," he bantered atlast, when at dusk he ventured out upon "El Camino Real" (which ispure Spanish for "The King's Highway"), that had linked Mission toMission all down the fertile length of California when the land waswilderness. "Solitude ought to feel good, after to-day." When he gotno answer, Dade looked around at the other.
Jack's face showed vaguely through the night fog creeping in from theclamorous ocean off to the west. His legs were hanging free of thestirrups, and his hands rested upon the high saddle-horn.
"Say, Dade," he asked irrelevantly and with a mystifying earnestness,"which do you think would kill a man quickest--a slash across thethroat, or a stab in the heart?"
"I wouldn't call either one healthy. Why?"
"I was just wondering," Jack returned ambiguously. "If you hadn'thappened along--say, how did you happen to come? Was that anothersample of my fool's luck?" Since the coincidence had not struck himbefore, one might guess that he was accustomed to having Dade at hiselbow when he was most needed.
"Bill Wilson sent word that you were making seven kinds of a fool ofyourself--Bill named a few of them--and advised me to get you outof town. I've more respect for Bill's judgment than ever. I took hisadvice as it stood--and therefore, you're headed for safer territorythan you were awhile ago. It ain't heaven," he added, "but it's nextthing to it."
"I'm not hankering after heaven, right now," averred Jack. "Most anyother place looks good to me; I'm not feeling a hit critical, Dade.And if I didn't say it before, old man, you're worth a whole regimentto a fellow in a fix."