It was the muted footsteps, then, coming across the Brussels carpet
in the outer room. Crawford had allowed Rockland to drop back when
Ed Kenmare's bulk filled the doorway. A vague pain moved over the
sheriff's heavy weathered features.
"The manager heard a ruckus up here," he said. "I guess he was right.
No, Glenn--"
"Yes, Ed," said Glenn, violently, scooping up his Henry and whirling
back toward the man. Kenmare had his own six-shooter only half out of
its holster. He stopped that way, staring at the .44. There were other
men behind the sheriff now, several of the cowmen from the patio and
lobby, the hotel manager in a white morning coat.
"I guess there's no use denying it, is there?" said Crawford, through
his teeth.
Kenmare let his eyes drop to the Henry's wooden butt. Crawford felt it
then, sticky against his fingers, and realized the wood must have been
lying in the blood from Rockland's head. A nausea swept him.
"Ed," he said, unable to keep from it, "I didn't, I didn't--"
His bitter voice trailed off as he saw resignation in Kenmare's faded
eyes. "Listen, son," the man told him. "It won't do you no good this
way. Give me that gun now."
"No." The finger lever made a sharp click, cocking, and with his hand
holding it down, Crawford started backing toward the window. "Think
I'd have a chance? It's all here, isn't it? All right here, cinched up
tighter'n a bucking rig. No loose lashings even. Everything to hang me.
I'm not going to be taken for that, Ed."
"Glenn," said Kenmare, with that same weighty reluctance, "for once,
don't be a hothead. You go off half-cocked like this and bugger your
bronc every time. This just won't do you any good--"
"Don't do it, Jason," Crawford shouted, turning his gun toward one of
the cattlemen behind Kenmare. Harry Jason stopped trying to shift back
of Kenmare where Crawford wouldn't see him draw his gun, and moved his
hand carefully away from the wooden butt of the weapon. There was no
intelligent reasoning in Crawford now. Only a terrible consciousness of
that dead body on the floor, and a blind, animal urge to escape this.
He lifted his leg over the iron railing of the balcony onto the ledge
outside. There was the first violent movement among the men in the room
as he crouched down to drop off the ledge, and he heard someone shout.
Then he jumped.
It was not a long fall, and he broke it by catching the edge of
the balcony with his free hand and hanging there till his arm was
stretched out with his weight, then letting go. One of his high heels
turned under him as he struck the flagstones below, and he let himself
go down on his knees and then roll it off to keep from spraining an
ankle. As he leaped to his feet, Kenmare appeared on the balcony, gun
out. Crawford was already running toward the front entrance, past the
line of cane chairs. There were still half a dozen cattlemen sitting
there, and two of them were standing at the end, and Kenmare was
apparently fearful of hitting them if he shot.
"Stop him," shouted the lawman. "Crawford. He killed Rockland. Get him,
you fools--"
The men standing made an abortive shift to block Crawford's passage,
but he was already opposite them, and surprise held the other men in
their chairs till he was almost to the door. He saw several pulling at
their guns, but Mexicans and cowhands were passing by outside in the
street, or stopping farther beyond in the Plaza to gape curiously, and
a bullet might have struck one of them. There were half a dozen cow
ponies at a cottonwood rack in front of the Manger, and as Crawford
reached them he noticed that the reins of the first were tied in a
hitch that could be knocked free. He did it with the tip of his gun,
throwing the ribbons over the animal's neck. Excited by Crawford's
running up like that, the hairy little black started to whirl inward.
Crawford jumped for the stirrup with one foot, letting the centrifugal
force slap him into the saddle as the horse whirled on around.
"Hey," shouted one of the cattlemen, streaming out of the patio behind
him. "Get off that horse, Crawford, he's mine--"
But Crawford was already turning the animal into Blum Street. Halfway
down the block he cut through an alley onto Commerce and turned at
the corner of Commerce and Alamo, wheeling into another alley that
led directly down to the river. He crashed through a line of washing
hung behind a squalid Mexican hovel and scattered a bunch of cackling
hens, tearing a white _camisa_ off his head, his hat going with it. A
Mexican woman ran from the hut, waving her arms and squealing at him,
and behind that he could hear the dim sounds of running horses. He had
gone down Blum to make them think he was heading west out of town, and
hoped they would not discover his true direction till he had left by
the south. He slid the pony down the stone coping banking the river,
letting the current carry him beneath the Market Street bridge before
trying to reach the opposite bank. He got out of town following back
alleys and side streets, and then broke into South Flores Street. And
now, as he pushed the laboring pony toward the twin spires of Mission
Concepción, it began to come.
There had been no room for it in the violent excitement of those first
few minutes, with all his concentration on escape. But now, with the
steady beat of running hoofs beneath him, it began to grow in him.
First, perhaps, it was a consciousness of that steady shuddering
pound of hoofs beneath him. Then, the constant, heated movement of
the horse's muscles, the dim sense of its flanks, rising and falling
with the heavy breathing, the feel of its shoulders beneath the saddle
moving back and forth. And finally, more than the movement and the
sound outside him. Something within. He did not know where it started.
In his legs, perhaps. Or his groin. Somewhere down there. A strange,
thin, hollow sensation.
"No--"
He didn't know whether it had been in his mind or whether he had said
it. He turned in the saddle, staring down the road behind, trying
to blot it from his consciousness. He was past the fields of white
niggerheads about Concepción, and was approaching the second mission,
San José de Aguayo, which had been established by the Spaniards here in
1720. But it was growing in him. He was sweating beneath the armpits
now. It was recognizable now. Pain. More than that--hollow, nebulous
sickness at the pit of his stomach. Pain. Pinpricks of it, shooting up
his legs. A hoarse, strained sob escaped him. How could it be? They had
told him, no. He was healed. How can it be? _I'm healed, damn you, I'm
healed._
The roof of San Aguayo had fallen in, and only a few windows were left
in the south wall, protected by the remains of delicate iron _rejas_,
their tarnished panes flashing dully in the sun as Crawford passed
by. He was barely conscious of this. He was sweating now, his fists
gripping the reins so desperately the knuckles gleamed translucently
through the skin. The pain seemed to have sound now. His head was
roaring with it. He was shaking violently now, and the horse felt it
and began reflecting his lack of control, breaking its stride, shifting
from side to side down the road.
The stepped belfries of San Francisco de la Espade rose into view.
The last ruins of the _baluarte_ built for the defense of the mission ran
parallel to the road, sections of this bastion crumbling off into the
ruts of the highway. The horse changed leads to side-step some of the
adobe fallen onto the road, and Crawford lurched out of the saddle,
barely recovering himself. He heard someone making hoarse, guttural
sounds, and realized it was himself. And now, more than the pain,
something else was rising in him. The hot, sweaty fetor of the horse
filled him with a violent nausea. He had a wild impulse to escape it.
He caught himself actually stiffening up to throw himself free of the
running horse.
"No!"
Again, he did not know if it was in his head, or if he had shouted
it. The very sound of the running horse seemed to fill his brain now.
Each thundering hoofbeat was a separate note of agony. And more than
the agony which filled him, that other something he could not define,
or would not, so confused with the pain now he could not tell the
two apart. Finally he could stand it no longer. Brutally, he reined
in the horse. The animal brought himself to a series of stiff-legged
halts that almost jolted him over its head. He swung off the lathered,
heaving animal, and then, standing with his face toward its hairy wet
hide, he was filled with that nausea again. He wheeled away from the
horse, stumbling across the road to a pile of rubble that marked the
remains of the aqueduct. With a hoarse exhalation, he lowered himself
weakly to the adobe, dropping his head forward into his hands, so that
the black hair fell through his grimy fingers in dank, sweaty tendrils.
"I _can_ ride," he said aloud, in a desperate voice, "I _can_ ride!"
_Chapter Two_