Dark had fallen. The winter night was setting its teeth hard when
Robin dismounted in the Mayne yard. He had forgotten about being
tired. His brain had kept a strange sort of time to the drum of
hoofs on the frozen ground. He couldn’t make a decision. His
instinct was to stand his ground. Yet he knew the risk of that.
Sutherland would be implacable. Once a fighting man himself, for a
long time Sutherland had frowned on gun fighting on his range. He
had grown old and rich. Both publicly and privately he was strong
for law and order, set against feuds. He was a fanatic in loyalty.
He would never believe that Mark Steele had forced the issue. He
would say he meant to see justice done when in reality he would be
seeking revenge on an alien rider who had killed one of his trusted
men.
Robin held his decision until he could talk with Dan Mayne. Red Mike
stood in a stall. He could ride fast and far. He stood a moment to
pat the red horse’s glossy hide, thinking that he hated to run. He
had been afraid and he was no longer afraid. He would never be
afraid of any man again. Robin had never heard a champion pugilist’s
dictum that “the bigger they are the harder they fall”, but that was
in essence how he felt now. Only, as a reward for proving that truth
to himself, he did not wish to wear a striped government suit and
enjoy free lodging in state quarters for an indefinite period. Adam
Sutherland was powerful enough in Choteau county to inflict that
penalty on him.
He walked into the house. Mayne sat by the fireplace sucking his
pipe. Ivy came to meet him.
“I’m empty as a last year’s water barrel,” he said to her. “Get me
some supper, will you, hon?”
“Where on earth have you been all this time in this kind of
weather?” Ivy stayed to ask.
“Oh, every place,” Robin put her off. “Go on, old girl. I’m
starved.”
Ivy went into the kitchen.
“Steele jumped me this afternoon down at the Birch Creek line camp.
I killed him,” Robin said bluntly, as soon as they were alone.
Mayne took his pipe out of his mouth. For a second he looked
incredulous. Then a shade of fear crossed his face.
“Good Lord!” he breathed. “The fat’ll be in the fire now. The Block
S’ll be on us like a bunch of wolves.”
“On us?” Robin queried. “How? Where do you come in? I did the
killin’.”
“How?” Mayne echoed. He rose to his feet, strode up and down the
room. “How? Hell, I know Sutherland. He’ll make this range too hot
to hold me. He’ll take this personal. He thought the sun rose an’
set around that ---- ---- ----!”
He spat a mouthful of epithets on the dead man. Robin stared at
Mayne with a little heart sinking. This was the reward for loyalty.
Mayne saw only his material interests further imperiled by the
inevitable dénouement. The big fish, angered, would harry the little
fish who had troubled the range waters. It came over Robin with a
discouraging conviction that for all he was in a way of becoming
Mayne’s son and right bower he could expect little backing, either
moral or financial, in this crisis. Mayne had been furious at
Shining Mark’s depredations, furious and afraid. Shining Mark would
rustle no more Bar M Bar calves. But Mayne had a new
fear--Sutherland’s anger. The Block S could blackball him, refuse to
handle his stock, bar his riders from round-up, throttle him in a
dozen ways.
Something like contempt stirred briefly in Robin.
“I don’t see where you need worry,” he said.
Perhaps his tone brought Mayne back to a consideration of immediate
consequences.
“You’ll have to jump out, I guess,” said he. “Sutherland’ll get you
buried for life if you stand trial, no matter how good a defence you
got. How’d the play come up?”
Robin told him briefly. The old man listened, shaking his head.
“You ain’t got a chance in the world, unless you could prove Mark
was actually stealin’,” he gave his opinion. “Thatcher’ll swear
black is white an’ white’s no color at all. Gosh, Robin, I wish you
hadn’t got Steele.”
“If I’d ’a’ known you’d back water in a pinch maybe I wouldn’t,”
Robin said slowly. “He didn’t steal my calves. I could ’a’ let it
slide. I could ’a’ told Shinin’ Mark I was deaf, dumb, an’ blind
about what went on on this range, and he would have left me alone.
You’re a poor stick, Mayne.”
“I ain’t either. I’m as game as the next,” Mayne retorted. “But I
can go broke on lawyers an’ witnesses a whole lot quicker than Adam
Sutherland, an’ get put outa business besides. It’s all right for
you wild kids to rip an’ tear regardless. It’s took me thirty years
to collect a thousand head of cattle an’ a home.”
He strode up and down the bare floor mumbling to himself. Robin sat
thinking. He would have to go on the dodge. If he stood pat he would
be under arrest within forty-eight hours. Mayne was frightened. He
could see that. The old man wanted only to wash his hands of the
whole business.
Ivy came to the door and beckoned. Robin sitting with downcast eyes
did not notice. She came in, looked from one to the other.
“What’s wrong now?” she demanded. “Somethin’ is.”
“This crazy kid has gone an’ killed Mark Steele,” Mayne flared up.
“We’re tryin’ to figure what he’d better do.”
“I’ll do my own figurin’,” Robin said tartly. He had already made up
his mind. “I’m goin’ to eat an’ ride. You can rest easy. I won’t mix
you up in no big trial.”
Ivy stood as if petrified. When Robin put out his hand to her she
shrank.
“So--oh,” he breathed. “It jars you like that, does it?” and walked
past her into the kitchen.
His food was on the table. He set himself to eat. It might be a long
stretch between meals, he thought grimly. But beyond a bit of bread
and meat and a cup of coffee food seemed to choke him. He was calm
enough. He had no more regret than he would have had at crushing a
snake’s ugly head under his boot heel. But he quivered inside. He
sat alone by the table listening to the mutter of voices in the
other room. He had played the game. Because he had played a
desperate trump to take the winning trick, he must lose. He felt
that. Mayne most of all feared for his security as a little cowman
tolerated in the heart of a cattle king’s domain. Ivy--he couldn’t
make her out. Something seemed to be slowly freezing inside Robin.
Ivy came out of the other room at last and stood looking at him as
he rolled a cigarette and lit it, nursing his chin in one palm as he
blew smoke.
“It’s awful, Robin,” she sighed. “I wish I’d never gone to that
dance. What’ll you do?”
“Hit the trail,” he answered.
Ivy stood still. She didn’t offer to kiss him. She seemed deep in
some consideration which had, Robin felt forlornly, very little to
do with him.
“Will you go with me?” Some obscure impulse prompted the question.
“I might never come back.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” she whispered.
Then she flung herself at Robin, clung to him. She buried her face
in his shoulder, shaking with sobs.
“Oh, it’s awful, Robin,” she cried. “I can’t bear it. It’s awful!”
“Can’t bear what?” Robin asked.
He had no key to her mood. He couldn’t tell whether her grief was
for him or Mark or for herself, or whether this tragedy in which she
was involved simply oppressed her beyond endurance. But her grief
racked him. He knew no way to comfort her. He could not stay to
comfort her. For a moment he thought of explaining that this trouble
had arisen simply because Mark Steele was a thief trying to cover
his trail. But it was a little late for explanation which did not
alter facts. They had never told Ivy the real truth. And Mark was
dead. It didn’t matter now.
She withdrew from his arms and began nervously to gather up dishes.
Robin watched her for a minute. Some sort of impalpable barrier was
between them. Nothing he could say or do would make it any
different.
“Well, I got to get organized,” he said and rose. Ivy looked at him
once, went on with her work. Old Mayne appeared in the doorway.
“What you aim to do?” he inquired uneasily. “Stand pat, or light
out?”
“What you think yourself?” Robin asked. It was an idle question. He
knew what he would do. He was only curious to know what Mayne really
wanted him to do.
“If it was anybody but Sutherland you might come clear,” Mayne
grumbled. “With the Block S pullin’ the strings you’ll get
manslaughter sure as blazes.”
“Suppose I stand trial and get a year, or two, or ten?” Robin went
on. “Where’ll I be at with you two when I come out?”
Mayne glanced at his daughter, wet his lips with the tip of his
tongue. The girl stood silent. Robin looked from one to the other. A
faint sardonic smile fluttered about his lips.
“You got a home here anytime you come back,” Mayne said. “You know
that.”
There was no warmth in the assurance. Robin felt that when he had
ridden out into the night something like relief would be the most
definite sensation in the agitated breasts of these two.
“Well, you don’t need to worry,” he said at last. “I’m not goin’ to
stand arrest. I don’t know as any Tyler ever did, come to think of
it. Chances are if they send a deputy sheriff after me he’ll ride
careful, prayin’ to God he don’t come on me. There’s a lot of
territory between here an’ Texas where a man can make a fresh
start.”
He walked out without waiting for an answer. Mayne followed with a
lantern. Robin saddled Red Mike, led him out and dropped the reins
at the bunk house door. There were a few odds and ends he wanted,
clothes he would need. In twenty minutes he was ready, rifle slung
under his stirrup leather, a hundred rounds of ammunition belted on,
his clothes in a war bag across his saddle. He turned with his hand
on the stirrup and walked back to the house. He couldn’t leave Ivy
like that. He was sick inside, but he couldn’t go without a word.
“I’m gone to the wild bunch, hon,” he put his arms around her.
Ivy sobbed afresh, repeating that senseless “Oh, it’s awful,” over
and over until Robin stopped her mouth with a kiss that brought no
answering pressure from her cold lips.
“I’m gone,” he said briefly. “You want me to come back?”
“I don’t want you to go,” she cried, “I don’t want you to go!”
“I got to.”
“I guess so. All right,” she seemed to collect herself. “Write to me
Robin, an’ tell me how you make out.”
“I’ll get word to you,” he promised. “Good-by.”
Within ten minutes he drew up at his own door. He came near passing
the dimly outlined cabin with a glance and a sigh, but he recalled
some papers he thought wise to take and so dismounted. He struck a
match, got what he wanted out of a tin box on a shelf, and rode on.
The moon was still below the horizon. Robin pointed Red Mike’s nose
straight for the Block S home ranch and rode fast. The point he bore
for lay straight across the Bear Paws where the Montana Central
branched off the main line of the Great Northern. He could go in
three directions from there. He would be on a train before word of
that killing reached the Block S.
He had an idea that pursuit and search would be perfunctory until
Adam Sutherland stirred up the county authorities, privately speeded
up the mechanism of the sheriff’s office. Even if Thatcher or one of
the others took horse and rode they could cover ground no faster
than he. He would beat them to the railroad by hours. After
that--well Robin knew the range men, banked for safety on that
knowledge. They would look for him anywhere but on a train. And
Robin meant in that hour to turn his back forever on the range and
cattle and cow thieves--all that had been his life ever since he
could remember. He rode over the high, moon-washed divide of the
Bear Paws in snow three feet deep, with a maturing plan and a
definite purpose and destination in mind. A clean break! A new
country, a different country. Everything behind him severed.
From the Bar M Bar to Havre Junction was a little over forty miles
in an air line. Robin dismounted in the outskirts of the little town
at three P.M., having ridden the distance in six hours.
He stood patting Red Mike’s sweaty neck while the beast nuzzled him
impatiently.
“So long, old boy,” he whispered. “You’ll be free to roam now. I
hope nobody grabs you just because they know I’ve quit the country.”
Red Mike rolled in the snow, shook himself like a dog, ambled away,
vanished in the dark. In three or four days he would be grazing with
the wild horses on Chase Hill, or by Cold Spring, back in his old
haunts. Robin watched him go with a little pang.
Then he took his saddle on his shoulder and passed along a dark
street until he found a livery stable with a sleepy hostler whom he
roused off a cot in the office.
“I want to leave this saddle here for a spell,” he said.
“All right. Chuck her in the harness room,” the man said. “Gee whiz,
I’m sleepy! I’m goin’ to pound my ear again.”
Robin gained the railroad station without meeting a soul. The saddle
would be safe for a month, six months, a year. He was going where he
would not need a saddle. If he didn’t come back to claim it, no
matter.
In a dim corner of the empty waiting-room he changed to his good
suit and plain shoes. Then he sat down to await the west-bound
passenger.
This train would go through Big Sandy at six o’clock. There was
little likelihood of any one there knowing that Mark Steele had
passed out of the picture. No one would dream of Robin Tyler riding
boldly west on the Montana Central through Sutherland’s home town.
If he could get past Fort Benton and Helena without being recognized
he was safe. Detective bureaus did not flourish in the cow country.
Sheriffs had duties enough at home without going far afield for
trouble. The survivor of a private war who quietly left for parts
unknown was seldom troubled by the authorities in a distant state.
Robin banked on that. He would go far and he would never come back.
It would be a closed chapter. Sitting in that dimly lit room he felt
no fear of consequences, no pang of remorse, only a strange touch of
sadness. He hadn’t wanted it to be that way. Six months earlier he
had looked forward confidently, joyously indeed, to a future in the
shadow of the Bear Paws, a future that comprised round-up and wild
riding, a bunch of cattle of his own, a home on Little Birch--and
Ivy to make that home bright. He had loved the sight of the hills in
summer, the pressure of the wind on his face as he rode. Life had
been pleasantly compounded of hope and ambition and love, the regard
of his fellows and a singular sense of oneness with his environment.
He shook himself out of this brooding. It made him ache. It was
done, finished. He might drift eventually to other cattle ranges but
he would never ride the Bear Paws again, he would never sit on Chase
Hill at sundown and watch the afterglow rose-pink on Old Centennial.
And he would not listen again to May Sutherland’s throaty voice.
Robin was conscious enough of his mental processes to wonder why he
thought of May Sutherland now instead of Ivy, why the image of the
one who had wept bitter tears on his shoulder six hours ago grew
obscured by a sharp-cut vision of the other sitting on a sorrel
horse looking wide-eyed into the west where the plains rolled like
the sea.
May would have understood how a man might be caught in a vicious
circle and forced to play the only card he held. He doubted if Ivy
did.
Anyway, it didn’t matter, Robin assured himself morosely. Neither
woman could count for much now. He was to all intents an outlaw.
Before long there might literally be a price on his head.
He kept his face to the window on the opposite side of the car when
the train hauled up at Big Sandy station. Dawn was breaking when the
Fort Benton stop came. Beyond Fort Benton Robin breathed easier.
Once the train passed Great Falls and bore up into the foothills of
the Rockies he shook off his wariness and began to view the country
with interest. He was in a new country already and the lure of the
unknown began to exert its spell.
Robin was for the coast, the far Pacific which he had never seen. He
had little of the landsman’s curiosity about the sea, but he knew
that no one would dream of a cow-puncher with a killing behind him
planting his stakes on Puget Sound. He had bought a ticket on the
train. As that read, Helena was his destination. Helena was at once
the state capital and the winter rendezvous and residence of many
cattlemen, Sutherland among them. On any street corner he might meet
a man he knew. So Robin kept on to Butte. He could make a detour and
get back on the main line at a junction west of the continental
divide.
Thus he avoided a stop in the last place where he might be
recognized. Twelve hours later he was forging along the Hell Gate
river, the Rockies behind him, the world ahead of him, a ticket to
Seattle and three hundred dollars in his pocket.
The sun blazed in the car windows. The valley beside the track, the
hills, the farther higher mountains glittered with frost and snow.
Robin with his nose to a pane reflected that it might be worse. They
might be burying him instead of Shining Mark. And when a man died he
was a long time dead. Thus he comforted himself as the train rolled
west.
A porter sonorously announcing luncheon reminded Robin that hunger
could be appeased in the dining car. He had eaten coffee and hot
cakes early that morning at a chophouse in Silver Bow. He brushed
his hair and followed the porter.
In the second Pullman to the rear he brought up in the doorway with
a start. Three seats ahead, facing him wide-eyed with surprise, sat
May Sutherland. A broad pair of shoulders surmounted by a thick red
neck informed him that Adam Sutherland was her vis-a-vis. For a
moment Robin’s eyes met the girl’s inquiring stare. Then he swung on
his heel and went back to his seat. The world was too small. There
would be no food for him in that dining car. He did not dare run the
gauntlet.
For an hour Robin chafed in his seat. Here were both disturbance and
danger. The mere knowledge that May was within speaking distance
troubled him in a vague fashion. And if Adam Sutherland laid eyes on
him! By now the owner of the Block S must have been informed of what
had befallen Mark Steele.
Robin looked up from these reflections to find May at his elbow,
smiling uncertainly. He rose. For the life of him he could not help
a slightly apprehensive glance past her. She seemed to divine his
thought.
“Dad’s having a smoke back in the observation,” she said.
“Will you sit down a minute?” Robin bethought himself of courtesy.
May slipped into the seat facing him, looked at him with a sober
intentness.
“What has happened?” she asked quietly.
Robin stared. Either she knew what had happened, or her intuition
was uncanny. What difference did it make to her?
“How do you know anything has happened?” he countered.
“I don’t _know_,” she replied slowly. “But I have that sort of
feeling. When you came to our car and turned back. Perhaps it was
that. I don’t know.”
Robin’s mind worked fast. If word had reached Adam Sutherland and
Sutherland discovered he was on that train, old Adam would have an
officer at his elbow between stations. He doubted if May would
mention his presence. Yet she might. She _was_ frank. Robin couldn’t
associate her with deceit or subterfuge. But if he asked her not to
mention him she wouldn’t--only he would have to tell her why. And
why not? She would learn eventually. Robin felt that he would rather
she learned from his own lips. He remembered with a queer glow that
she had said: “If there is to be a funeral I hope it will be his.”
“I’m on the dodge,” he said quietly. “Mark Steele jumped me day
before yesterday. I killed him. That’s why I backed out of your car.
I didn’t want your dad to see me. I’m quittin’ Montana for good.”
He put his hands on his knees and faced her impassively, curious to
see how she would take it. A little gleam of admiration warmed him.
She had nerve, this slender wisp of a girl. She neither winced nor
looked shocked nor did any of the things a woman might reasonably be
expected to do when a man calmly informs her that he has taken
another man’s life.
“Somehow, I don’t seem to be surprised much, nor horrified, nor
sorry,” she murmured at last. “I suppose he crowded you into a
corner. But do you have to run? Haven’t you a plea of defense?”
“Not much, as it stands. And I’d need a good one,” he told her
soberly. “You see Steele kept diggin’ into me all fall. He wanted me
to jump him so that he could kill me. He drove me crazy that day in
Big Sandy. I said before twenty men that I’d kill him. The kind of
lawyers and the kind of witnesses that would be against me in a
trial would cook my goose. There’d only be my word that I had to get
him or he would have finished me. This Thatcher was there. He’ll
have his own story. He’s just as keen to put me away as Shinin’ Mark
was. All things considered I can’t stand trial. I was born free,” he
ended a little wistfully, “I’ve lived free and I aim to die that
way. I won’t take no chance on lookin’ through bars like a caged
wolf for doin’ somethin’ that was forced on me.”
“There is more than Ivy Mayne back of this,” May said slowly. There
was a peculiar sort of conviction in her tone.
“Yes,” Robin admitted. “But it don’t do no good to talk about that
now. Too late.”
May rose.
“I must go back,” she said. “We are on our way to visit friends. We
get off at Missoula. Is there any message I can take back to--to any
one, when I go home in the spring.”
Robin shook his head.
“Remember me to the hills when you go ridin’,” he muttered. “That’s
all.”
The girl’s eyes clouded.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and held out her hand. “Good-by, Robin
Tyler--and good luck to you.”
Robin turned his face to the frosted window. There was a blur in his
eyes as well as on the pane. A lump in his throat grew and swelled
till it seemed as if it would choke him.