"What's the meaning of all this, Winifred?” he called angrily.
She jerked her head towards him with a cry of panic, then swerved her horse away and went racing through the dimly lighted street. He spurred after her, still cursing; a group of half-drunken men staggered out from the pavement; he thundered through them with loose rein, and they shrank from the horse with shrill shrieks of terror. But at the next corner a cart swung across the street so suddenly that he had to pull his horse back on its haunches to avoid a ruinous crash. He loosed a triple-jointed invective at the head of the cart-driver and swerved around the wagon to follow his pursuit. But already Winifred was a dimly bobbing shape in the distance of the night, and as he followed her out of the town he was still growling. Perhaps she would be unsaddled and in her room before he got to the house, and in that case she might deny that she had been out that night at all. He could not accuse her if she wished to deny, and he felt, strangely enough, as if he were surrendering some sort of impalpable advantage over her.
It was because he rode so furiously, perhaps, with lowered head, that a horseman was able to ride out directly in his path. He was past the outskirts of Kirby Creek and already the shack was a black spot in the darkness ahead when a voice shouted at him.
He looked up in time to catch the gleam of steel by the starlight, and threw his weight back against the reins. Yet in his blind irritation he had no thought of surrender. A black horse surmounted by a white-masked rider faced him.
"Hands up!" called the Night Hawk.
And Kirk whipped up his hands, but in one of them came his revolver and it exploded in exact unison with the gun of the bandit. A humming sprang into his face — his hat was whisked from his head — and he knew that the bullet had missed him by an inch. With a yell like a hunting Indian he spurred in at the Night Hawk, but the latter, without attempting a second shot, urged his horse to a gallop and passed directly by the side of Kirk. The maneuver was so sudden, so unexpected, that the second bullet of Kirk went wide. The snarl of the bandit was at his very ear as he whirled his horse and set out in pursuit.
A stern chase, on sea or land, is proverbially a long one. Yet Kirk might have overhauled the Night Hawk in the first half mile of the race if he had known the ground over which they galloped. But it was all new to him. The bandit seemed to know it as if a sun shone to guide him. He swirled here and there among the boulders of the valley and again, again and again, his course turned at sharp angles at the very moments when Kirk fired. Every shot must have gone wide by whole yards.
Now and again he used the spurs, but in spite of the speed of his willing horse he was losing ground, an inch at a time, and the figure of the Night Hawk faded more and more quickly into the darkness. There was a fierce happiness in Kirk. The winnings at the gaming house of Yo Chai were nothing. Mere gold which weighted his belt now and dulled his chances in the pursuit. How much greater this! to have conquered and put to flight the terror of Kirby Creek! His pulses sang. He wished that ten thousand people were watching that pursuit while he drove the bandit like a whipped cur before him.
It was strange that the Night Hawk did not attempt to fire back at him. He began to guess that the bandit had been wounded in that first exchange of shots. And the thought was a new triumph. He had beaten a great gunfighter of the Southwest with his own weapons, with the odds of a surprise attack against him; now he felt that there was not a single human being in the world whom he would not face with laughing confidence. And strangely enough the picture that rose before him of the most formidable man he could conceive was not of a big-shouldered fellow like himself, but of the slender grace of Clung and the lightning speed of his hands. To be frank, in the old days he had actually feared Clung ever since the moment when he saw the strange fellow whirl and drop from his seat with two guns in his hands as if they had been conjured out of thin air. Now he wished with all his soul that some test might come out of their courage and their strength and their skill. He laughed fiercely, between his teeth, and buried the spurs in the flanks of his snorting horse.
They had passed, now, from the big, boulder-strewn ravine of Kirby Creek and entered the throat of a narrower valley. Here the ground was more nearly level and there was only a faint scattering of the big rocks. The effect of this new ground told almost at once. It was no longer necessary for Kirk to spur his horse. The animal seemed to lower towards the ground as it lengthened its stride, and its beating hoofs struck out sharp showers of sparks now and again from the rocks underfoot. The form of the Night Hawk, which had dwindled to a formless, shifting shadow in the night, now drew back rapidly to them, until Kirk could make out every detail of the man as he bent forward over his saddle-horn, apparently urging his flagging mount to greater efforts. The big man yelled with his triumph and poised his revolver for another shot — when suddenly the form of the Night Hawk, horse and man, vanished from sight as completely as if the ground had opened and swallowed them.
Chapter 27
With a chill of horror he pulled in his horse and swung him about in the opposite direction. There was no Night Hawk in sight; but far down the valley Kirk caught the clatter of flying hoofs, not departing, but approaching. Someone else had joined the pursuit, and a hot wave of anger touched the big man with the thought that someone else might share in the glory of the capture which was almost his.
The Night Hawk had vanished like a puff of smoke, yet it was perfectly impossible that he was gone. They had been riding close beside the wall of the valley, which at this point and for several hundred yards on either side was a sheer cliff of granite rising a full hundred feet from the floor of the ravine. Who could be absorbed into a block of solid granite? There was one possibility, a crevice in the face of the rock.
At the point where the Night Hawk had disappeared, the cliff jagged back at a perfect right angle. Along the face of the rock Kirk, dismounting, felt his way, and the horse followed at his heels like a dog, puffing on his back. The wall of rock was irregular, giving back here and there into small crevices, not sufficient to shelter even a dog. And so Kirk came to the point where the cliff turned back in its original direction. He turned back with a sigh of despair. And it was then that his foot struck a stone and he toppled sidewise against the cliff. His head struck heavily against the stone; but his fall continuing he found himself lying flat on the ground. Half dazed, he started up, and once more struck his head, more sharply this time. The meaning of it dawned on him.
On the way down the face of the cliff he had passed this crevice in the rock, because he had been feeling on the level with his own shoulder. It was, undoubtedly, the entrance to the retreat of the Night Hawk; this was how he had faded into the face of the cliff. As he stood there, setting his teeth for the adventure and gripping his revolver butt, he heard the clatter of hoofs sweep down the valley, past the mouth of the crevice. He had a mind, at first, to rush out and call after the stranger for help, for certainly it was work for the best two men who ever lived to beard the Night Hawk in his den; he would rather have invaded the cave of a mountain lion armed with a stick. For the spring of the mountain lion might not be fatal; but the stroke of the Night Hawk in that dark passage would be death.
Nevertheless it was this very greatness of danger which fascinated Kirk and drew him on now by its very terror. He began to feel his way down the passage.
Almost at once it increased in height, which explained how the horse had disappeared as well as the man; for it would be comparatively simple to teach a horse to creep through the low opening of the rock-tunnel — once inside the mouth, the animal could straighten to its feet.
He went on. The sand underfoot at first seemed to mask the sound of his progress, but in a little time the senses of Kirk began to grow attuned with the blanketing, horrible dark. His eyes saw odd imaginings in the blackness, glowing eyes winking at him a yard away; his ears caught a grim succession of sounds. The crunch of his feet in the dry sand which had drifted into the tunnel grew louder and louder until it se
emed great enough to alarm a sleeping army. Other sounds besieged him; steps approached him and stopped at a little distance, and he could hear the heavy, guarded breath of the watcher.
A swift succession of fancies rose in his brain. Perhaps, after all, this was not the entrance to the cave of the Night Hawk, but was the lair of some mountain lion, a female with her hungry brood. Perhaps that was the heavy, guarded breath which he heard — the monster crouching and ready to spring. He stopped and listened. Not a sound except the wild thundering of his heart.
What had he to do in this dark tunnel in the desert? Well, there was nothing to make him pursue the search. He could turn and go back at any instant. It was that very fact which spurred him on, step after step.
Moreover, he thrilled with inconceivable delight at the thought of how he had met the redoubtable Night Hawk and worsted him in single combat. That brief meeting in the night was the second of the three steps which William Kirk was to take towards the primitive; and the third step was directly before him. Now, like the wolf which follows a wounded prey into the most dangerous covert, so Kirk with set teeth and thrilling nerves went down the passage step by step.
A long trip in the telling but a matter of seconds only until he saw before him a winking of light which at first was grimly like a glowing eye — so realistic that Kirk dropped to his knees and poised his revolver to fire. And it was then that he knew, in a burst of joyous certainty, that he was not afraid. He was excited, trembling with nervousness, but not afraid; rather the prospect of the battle was a glad thing.
In an instant he was sure that the light came from a point still further down the passage, and rising from his knees he ventured forward again. Now the tunnel widened constantly and finally made a sharp turn to the right — so sharp a change of direction that Kirk almost stumbled into full view of the Night Hawk.
For it was he. He sat, apparently quite at ease in the security of his retreat, beside a small open fire. The burning stick lay between three rocks of considerable size, blackened by the soot of countless fires, and forming a resting-place for pots and pans of the rough cookery of the outlaw. As for him, he sat with his head bowed so low that Kirk could not make out his face, and he was busy wrapping a bandage around his right hand. It was now very plain what had happened in the encounter earlier that night. The bullet from Kirk's gun had ploughed a furrow across the back of the Night Hawk's hand; and it was this which had prevented the outlaw from opening fire on his pursuer.
Beyond the outlaw stood a black horse of matchless size and beauty. Certainly Kirk's mount could never have gained on such an animal as this had it not been that the outlaw's horse was weakened by long and continuous riding. The mark of the saddle was outlined by the grey salt of dried sweat along his sides and back; and his ribs still rose and fell from the exertion of the last burst of speed. There was a continual rustling and crunching as the stallion nosed among his forage.
All these things Kirk noted with the first glance, and still he delayed to make the capture. He let that easy task wait and rolled the taste of the pleasure of victory over his tongue. Still crouched in the throat of the passage he looked up by the firelight to the rocks on all sides. It was now perfectly plain how the refuge had been formed. A vast mass of rock — millions of ton — had tilted to one side and settled against its neighbor, crumbling close to it at the top, but leaving this narrow crevice at the bottom. A perfect retreat, for now Kirk heard what seemed several musical voices in distant conversation; listening more intently, he discovered the sound of running water. Here were all things necessary to the Night Hawk. The only inconvenience was the long tunnel through which he must drag all his supplies both for himself and his horse.
However, men and horses of the desert are trained to subsist on rations of small bulk. The safety of the place made up amply for every disadvantage. Here at the very doors of Kirby Greek the outlaw lived in security and preyed when and where he pleased.
The bandaging of his hand was now completed and after surveying the wounded hand for a moment and nodding as if with satisfaction, the Night Hawk lifted his head and William Kirk found himself staring into the face of the big blond man who had spoken with him in the gaming house of Yo Chai. A kindly face, now as then; though Kirk thought that he detected in it a glint of wildness, but perhaps that was the effect of imagination.
Still he delayed to jump out on the outlaw with his challenge and watched Dave Spenser rise from the fire, pick up two sticks of wood, ignite them over the flames and set them in turn in crevices on the sides of the rock-room. They had either been soaked in oil or they were extremely resinous, for they burned with a yellow and flaring light. By that illumination Kirk saw the strangest sight his eyes had ever dwelt upon.
Chapter 28
For the light of the first torch streamed down upon the most costly altar that had ever come into the dreams of William Kirk. A shelf of the natural rock was covered by a cloth of gold brocade, a treasure worth many thousands for the price of the materials alone, to say nothing of the art of the weavers. On either side of this cloth stood two golden candlesticks, each a full foot and a half in height and set with green and red points of light — emeralds and rubies worth in themselves a king's ransom. Above these and crowning the altar was a silver image of the Virgin with eyes of jewels, holding a golden Christ and crowned with a halo of solid gold, all cunningly worked. The robe of the Virgin was set with a border of diamonds, glittering against the dull silver of the image. It seemed to Kirk that he had never seen so priceless a relic.
Nor was this all, for the yellow light of the second torch flared down the wall of the cave and glimmered and lingered along a whole row of jewels. Chains of gold, necklaces of pearl and diamond, bracelets set with em-
eralds and amethyst and rubies — all these apparently hanging on little pegs affixed to the rock. The spoils of a thousand robberies lay within a second's sweep of the eye; and the bandit now unrolled a small rug of thick, soft weaving, and sitting upon it cross-legged leaned his back against the rock, filled and lighted a pipe, and between puffs of blue smoke rolled his eye contentedly from treasure to treasure along his walls. Turning at length, he dipped his hand into a small box at his side and raised it heaping with gold coins which he allowed to rain back into the treasure box — the sweetest of chiming to the ear of William Kirk.
Before that musical shower ceased he leveled his revolver and called: "Hands up!"
The bandaged hand of the outlaw raised instantly above his head; from the fingers of the other he allowed the last of the coins to fall into the box, and then the second hand went leisurely above his head.
"I was afraid," said the Night Hawk, "that you'd arrive before the place was lighted up."
And so saying he turned his face towards the mouth of the tunnel from which Kirk was now emerging with his leveled revolver. It seemed to Kirk that the teeth of the Night Hawk were set hard over his pipe and that his eyes glinted with a light as hard and brilliant as the sparkle of those jewels which took the place of eyes in the forehead of the silver Virgin. Yet if this expression were an actuality and not the effect of the shifting, swinging lights of the torches, it passed in an instant, and the face of Dave Spenser was as good-natured and careless as it had been when he warned Kirk in the gaming house of Yo Chai.
"But you took so long coming down the passage,” said the Night Hawk, "that you gave me just time enough to get ready to receive you."
So saying, he smiled upon his visitor and Kirk looked curiously into the cold blue eyes of the bandit. There were many possibilities in them, from stupid good nature to wild, berserker rage and devilish cunning. The calm of the fellow alarmed him more than a leveled gun.
"Do you mean to tell me," he asked, "that you knew I was coming down the passage and yet you made no attempt to get me there in the dark?"
"In the meantime," said the Night Hawk, "my arms are growing a bit tired."
"Lower 'em,” said Kirk, "but keep your hands quiet. I don't tr
ust you, Spenser, and Fll blaze away at the first crooked move. Understand?"
"Perfectly," nodded the other, "besides,
And lowering his arms, he folded his hands on his knee.
"I won't tell you that you're a cool devil,” said Kirk, "because you know that better than I; but why have you given up the game, my friend?” The outlaw yawned leisurely and answered: "Because in my profession” — here he smiled — "a man can only afford to lose once. After that he’s done.”
"I don't follow that." "When a man's life is wanted by other men," explained Dave Spenser patiently, "and when he stakes his hand against the rest of the world, he loses a good many things — friends, companionship, comforts, and a long list of other things. He gets very few in return, but there is a compensation. For instance, before I turned the corner I was a poor gambler and a bad shot with any sort of a gun. But after I killed my first man all that was changed. Today it takes a pretty good man — somebody like Yo Chai, for instance — to beat me at the cards; and I never failed with my gun. I never failed because a single miss or a single slow draw meant death, nine chances out of ten. I killed the other man because I had to kill him and the possibility of missing him never entered my head."
Kirk had heard of this fatalism of the outlaw world; it interested him sharply to stand face to face with an exponent of the doctrine.
"Yet all the time/' went on the bandit, "I knew that there was some man in the world who would finally beat me to the draw; and once beaten I knew I'd be no good. To tell you the truth I've been looking for that man for several years."
Brand, Max - 1924 Page 12