CHAPTER XXV
IN THE DARK
It was a pitch black night, the stars hidden by dense drifting clouds,and intensely still. Buck Thornton and Two-Hand Billy Comstock, ridingside by side with few words, turned straight out across the fields, themarshal reining his horse close in to that other horse he could scarcelysee and leaving to the cowboy the task of finding their way.
They rode slowly until they turned into the level county road and thenswifter that they might come into Hill's Corners before it was midnight.When at last the twinkling lights of Dead Man's Alley winked at themComstock struck a match and looked at his watch.
"Fifteen minutes of twelve," he said. "You're on time. And I guess youcan do the rest of your riding alone? So long. I'm apt to drop in on youat the ranch any day."
Comstock had planned to ride straight to the Brown Bear saloon, toinvest in a stack of chips, and to spend the evening "seeing the town."And Thornton, understanding that if the note from Winifred Waverly weretruthful in all that it said and in all that it suggested, it would beas well if he were not seen tonight, turned out along the outskirts ofthe village to come to Pollard's house without riding through the mainstreet.
"Easy, Comet, easy," he muttered to his horse, having no desire to cometo the appointed place before the appointed hour. "We've got fifteenminutes and then won't have to keep the lady waiting. If she's there,Comet!"
For even yet his suspicions were not all at rest, already he rode withreins and quirt in the grip of his left hand, the right caught in theloose band of his chaps. It lacked but a few minutes of midnight when heentered the dark, silent street in which was Henry Pollard's house.
Here were a few straggling houses with many vacant lots between and nosingle light to show that any were awake, no gleam from a window to cutthrough the darkness which was absolute. Thornton drew his horse to theside of the road where the grass had not been worn away by the wheels ofwagons and where the animal's footfalls were muffled, hardly to be hearda score of paces away. Twice he stopped, frowning into the gloom abouthim, seeking to force his eyes to penetrate the impenetrable wall of thedark, straining his ears to catch some little sound through the silence.But there was nothing to see save the black forms of houses and the peartrees in Pollard's yard, shapeless, sinister shadows something darkerthan the emptiness against which they stood; no sound save his horse'sbreathing, the faint creak of his own saddle leather, the low jingle ofbridle and spur chain.
"Almost too still to be true," he told himself. "But," with a grimtightening of his lips, "too infernally dark for a man to pick me offwith a shotgun if he wanted to!"
Fifty yards from Pollard's front gate he stopped his horse, swung downnoiselessly from the saddle and tied Comet to a tree standing at theedge of the road; his jingling spurs he removed to hang them over thehorn of his saddle. Then he went forward on foot, walking guardedly, histread upon the grass making no sound to reach his own ears, and came toPollard's gate.
It was so dark under the pear trees that the obscurity was withoutdetail; he must guess rather than know where the tree trunks were; itwas hard to judge if they were ten feet or fifty feet from him. Theremight be no one here to keep tryst with him, while on the other hand adozen men might be waiting.
For perhaps two or three minutes he waited, standing motionless at thegate. No faint noise came to him, no hint of a shadow stirring amongthose other shadows as motionless as they were formless. The nightseemed not to breathe, no sound even of rustling branches coming to hisears from the old pear trees.
"It's twelve o'clock, and after," he thought. "If she's coming she oughtto be here now."
Still he waited. And then when he knew it must be ten or fifteen minutesafter the time Winifred had set, and remembering that she saidspecifically "under the pear trees," he moved forward suddenly, jerkedthe gate open and stood in Pollard's yard.
The little noise of the gate whining upon its worn hinges soundedunnaturally loud. His footfall upon the warped board walk which led tothe front door snapped through the silence like a pistol shot.
"If there's anybody laying for me here he knows now that I've come," hetold himself. And with no hesitation now, yet with no lessening of hiswatchfulness, he came on swiftly until he stood under the pear trees andwithin ten feet of the front porch.
It was still about him, intensely still, and black-dark. He stoodleaning forward a little, peering into the darkness, listening for asound, any sound. He knew that it must be half past twelve, that forclose upon half an hour he had waited here. Half an hour filled withquick, conflicting thoughts, suggesting a dozen explanations. Was thenote really from Miss Waverly? Had she acted in good faith in sendingit? What was the danger of which she spoke? Why had she not come, andwhy had she set an hour like this? Was it a mere hoax?
"If I could only have a smoke," he muttered, "it wouldn't be so badwaiting to see what the play is."
But still he waited, determined not to leave until possessed of thecertainty of there being no need of staying longer. Cautiously heapproached the house until he could have put out his foot to the firstof the steps leading up to the little porch. There he stopped, tellinghimself that doubtless he was just playing Tom-fool here in his enemy'sgarden. Less and less did he like the idea of prowling about the placeof Henry Pollard at this time of night.
But now at last there was a sound to vibrate against the empty silencein his ears, a little sound which at first he could not analyse andcould not locate. He could hardly be sure whether his senses had trickedhim or if he actually heard it. It seemed rather that he had _felt_ it.His body grew very tense as he tried to know where it was, what it was.But again the silence was heavier and more oppressive than before.
At last, through the void of the absolute stillness, it came again. Nowhe knew what it was although not even yet could he be certain whence itcame. It was a cautious step ... it might have been a man's step or awoman's. No muscle of his rigid body moved save alone the muscles whichturned his eyes to right and left.
At first he thought that there was some one moving toward him frombehind, some one who had perhaps just come in through the gate or hadbeen hidden in the straggling shrubbery. And the next instant he knewthat the sounds were in front of him, that what he heard was some onewalking in the house, tiptoeing cautiously, and yet not silently becausethe old boards of the floor whined and creaked under the slow tread. Hadthe night been less still, had his ears been less ready for any soundthe faint creak-creak would not have reached him.
"Woman or man?" was his problem. "Winifred Waverly or Henry Pollard?"
There came a second sound and this he recognized; the scraping of drywood against dry wood, the moving of the bars which the countryside knewthat Henry Pollard used as the nightlock upon his doors. Thornton drewback a little, step by step, slowly, silently, and stopped under thepear trees. Now he was ten feet from the first of the front steps, tenfeet from the board walk.
When a man must trust everything to his ears for guidance his earsmay tell him much. Thornton knew when the bars were down and when thedoor was opening very slowly. And then, suddenly, he knew that therewas a third person out here in the garden close to him, and that thisperson ... man or woman? ... was moving with as great a slow caution ashimself and the other some one in the house. There was the crack of atwig snapping underfoot ... silence ... slow cautious steps again.
The cowboy moved again, a bare two steps now, and stopped, his backagainst the trunk of the largest of the pear trees, his eyes runningback and forth between the door he could not see and the moving some onehe could not see at the corner of the house. His widened nostrils hadstiffened, as though he would scent out these beings, and his eyes werethe alert eyes of an animal in the forest seeking its enemy through thedenseness of a black undergrowth.
The door was open, the soft step was at the threshold. The other step atthe corner of the house had stopped. In the new silence the cowboy couldhear his own deep, regular breathing. He could see nothing, he knew thathis bod
y pressed against the tree trunk could not be seen, and his handswere ready. He began to long for a pistol shot, for the spurt of redfire, for anything that would mean certainty and would release thecoiled springs of his tense muscles.
But the still minutes dragged by and there was no certainty of anythingsave that the some one at the door and the some one at the corner of thehouse at Thornton's right were standing as still, as tense, as himself.A little sense of the grim humour of this game three people were playingin the dark, this Blind Man's Buff which he was waiting to understand,drew his lips into a quick, fleeting smile.
Now at last came the first bit of certainty. The some one at the doormoved again, came to the steps and down into the garden, taking thesteps slowly, with long pauses between. This some one was a man. DimlyThornton saw the blur of the form, but more than his eyes his ears toldhim that this tread, though guarded, was too heavy for a girl likeWinifred Waverly.
"Pollard," he told himself swiftly. "Not ten feet away. And if he comesthis way ..."
The man at the steps stopped and in the long silence Thornton knew thatthe two other people playing this grim game with him were listening evenas he was, trying to force their eyes to see through the shadows. Thenthe heavy tread again, and Thornton thought that it was coming nearer.Then a pause, the step once more, and Pollard, if Pollard it were, hadturned the other way and keeping close to the house was moving towardthe far corner. The steps grew fainter as they drew farther away, and heknew that the man had gone around the corner of the building.
That other person at the other corner of the house, at Thornton's right,had heard and understood, too. The cowboy heard steps there again, quicksteps, almost running, soft, quick breathing not a yard away, andbending forward a little, knew that Winifred Waverly had come to keepher tryst with him.
"Miss Waverly?" he whispered softly.
She was at his side, close to him, so close that he could feel the sweepof her skirts against his boots. She, too, had leaned forward, her facelifted up to his, her eyes seeking to make sure who this man was.
"Buck Thornton?" she whispered back.
"Yes. What is it?"
"Here. Quick!" She had thrust a folded paper into his fingers, closingthem tightly upon it. "Now, go! Do what I tell you in it. Henry Pollardsuspects something; he is looking for me. Go quickly!"
She was already passing him, hastening toward the steps and the frontdoor.
"Wait!" he commanded, his hand hard upon her arm. "I don'tunderstand...."
"For God's sake let me go!" Only a whisper, but he thought he heard aquiver of terror in it, he knew that her arm was trembling violently."He'd kill me. ... Oh, my God, go!"
"If there is danger for you..."
"There is none if you go now ... if he doesn't find me here. Please,Buck...."
She jerked away from him and went swiftly to the steps. He could hearher every step now so plainly his heart stood still with fear thatPollard must hear, too. He heard her go to the door; she passed on, andso became one with the blot of darkness within the house. Then he drewback, slowly, half regretfully, back toward the gate, stopping for alast time under the trees there. And after a very long time he heardPollard's steps again. The man had made a tour of his grounds, keepingrather close to the house, and now mounted the steps with no effort atsilence, slammed the door and dropped the bars into place. It was asthough he had flung them angrily into their sockets. Thornton went outof the yard and to his waiting horse.
"She says to go away, to leave her there alone with Pollard," hemuttered dully. "And something's up. She said he'd kill her if he knewthat she was talking to me..."
He hesitated, his horse's tie rope in his hand, of half a mind to goback, to force his way into Henry Pollard's house, to demand to knowwhat was wrong, to take the girl away if there were real danger to her.But then the urgent pleading in her voice came back to him, herinsistence that he go, that with him gone there would no longer be anydanger for her. Slowly, regretfully, he swung into the saddle. He hadmade up his mind. He would obey her at least in part, he would go wherehe could read the paper she had given him, and then perhaps he wouldunderstand.
"Any way," he said under his breath, "she's a real girl for you."
He rode swiftly the five hundred yards through the dark street which ranas nearly parallel with the main street as two such crooked streetscould approximate parallelism, until he was behind the Here's HowSaloon. Here he dismounted and, leaving his horse with reins thrown overhis head to the ground, strode off toward the side door of the saloon.
Under the window he glanced in swiftly. Chance had it that the cover wasoff of the little used billiard table and that two men, in shirt-sleevedcomfort, were playing. Both men he knew. They were Charley Bedloe andhis brother, the Kid.
The Bedloe boys were intent upon their game, the Kid laughing softly ata miscue Charley had made. Charley was chalking his cue angrily andcursing his luck and neither of them glanced toward the window.Thornton, drawing back a little so that he would not be seen did theyhappen to look his way, unfolded the paper Winifred had given him.
"Watch me play out my string, Charley!" he heard the Kid callbanteringly. Then he heard nothing more from the room, nothing to tellhim of another man not ten steps from him in the darkness, for his wholemind had been caught by Winifred's first words.
"I have wronged you from the beginning," she had written. "I thoughtthat I had seen you that day on the trail behind me. You denied it. Ithought that you were lying to me. While you were out after the horses aman, masked, came into the cabin and robbed me of the five thousanddollars I was taking to Henry Pollard. I _thought that it was you_! Theman was dressed as you were dressed, his grey handkerchief even was likeyours. Now I know it was a man named Ben Broderick who robbed me, andthat he wanted me to think that it was you.
"Can't you see the whole scheme? Broderick and the men who are with him,have been committing these crimes. And pretty soon, in a few days, infive days I think, they will be ready to make the evidence show that youare the man who has done it all."
There was more; there were several sheets of paper, closely written.Thornton saw the names of Henry Pollard, of Cole Dalton. But he read nofurther. In one instant the mind which had been so intent upon thesethings a girl's writing was telling him forgot Winifred Waverly, HenryPollard, Broderick--everything except that which was happening at hisside.
For, while he read, there had been the sharp crack of a revolver, he sawthe spit of angry reddish flame almost at his side, and as he saw hedropped to his knee, Winifred's note in his left hand, his rightflashing to his own revolver. For his first thought was that a man hadcrept up behind him, that it was Pollard, that he was shooting at him.
But almost with the flash and the report of the gun he knew that thisman was not shooting at him. There came the crash and tinkle of brokenglass, one of the small panes of the window beside which Thornton hadbeen reading dropped out, and almost before the falling pieces hadceased to rattle against the bare floor he heard the sound of runningfootsteps behind him. The man who had fired had made sure with one shot.
Then Thornton heard the Kid cry out, his voice hoarse and inarticulate,and with the cry came a moan from Charley Bedloe. Charley staggered halfacross the room, his two big hands going automatically to his hips. Hehad come close to his younger brother, staring at him with wide eyes,and then slipped forward and down, quiet and limp and dead.
Thornton's one first emotion, one so natural to a man who takes hisfight in the open, was a boundless rage toward the man who had murderedanother man in this cold blooded fashion, taking his grim toll from thedarkness and without warning. He whirled about, his own gun blazing inhis hand, and as fast as his finger could work the trigger sent sixshots after the flying footsteps.
The footsteps were gone. Again the cowboy looked swiftly in at thewindow. He saw that Charley Bedloe was dead; the Kid, his facecontorted, hideously twisted to his blended rage and grief, stoodstaring about him helplessly. Then, the moment o
f paralysis gone, theKid suddenly leaped over his brother's body and ran to the window.
"It's Buck Thornton!" roared the Kid. Both of his big guns were alreadyin his hands. "Take that, you...."
Then Buck Thornton, making most of an unforeseen situation, did a thingthat he had never done before in his life, which he never would doagain. He turned and ran, stumbling through the darkness into which oneleap carried him.
For he knew that the Kid had no shadow of a shred of doubt that he hadkilled Charley Bedloe, he knew that if he did not run for it, run like ascared rabbit now, why then he'd have to kill the Kid or the Kid wouldkill him. He had no wish to meet his death for the cowardly act ofanother man and he had no wish to kill Kid Bedloe because another manhad murdered his brother. If there were anything left to him but to runfor it, he did not know what it was.
He found his horse, leaped into the saddle and turned out toward thenorth.
"The Kid sure had his nerve, running right up to the window afterCharley dropped," he muttered, with the abrupt beginning of the firstbit of admiration he had ever felt for a man whom he had appraised aseven lower in the scale than "Rattlesnake" Pollard. "The boy is game!And now he's going to come out after me, and there won't be any talkingdone and it's going to be Kid Bedloe or me. And," with much certainty,but with a little sigh, half regretful, "the Kid is just a shade slow onthe draw. Sure as two and two I've got to kill him. Oh, hell," heconcluded disgustedly. "Why did this have to happen? Haven't I gotenough on my hands already?"
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